INTRODUCTION 9 



point, for Nature does not provide us with perfect 

 types ready made. 



In this way we may hope to gain some real 

 knowledge of a few plants, which may serve as a firm 

 foundation for more extended study afterwards. In 

 choosing the order of our types, we will begin with 

 the more highly organised plants, in which the division 

 of labour among the organs is most complete. We 

 do this, partly because the higher plants are most 

 familiar to us in everyday life, and partly because we 

 shall gain from them the clearest conceptions of organs 

 and their functions. 



Besides morphology and physiology, there are two 

 more divisions of Botany which we must mention. 

 One of these is the study of fossil plants that is, of 

 the vegetable remains which have come down to us 

 preserved in the earth from ages long past. This 

 is called the Palceontology of plants, or sometimes 

 Palceo-lotany that is, the science of ancient plants. 

 From one point of view this is simply a part of 

 morphology; we compare the fossil plants among 

 themselves and with recent ones, and draw conclusions, 

 so far as we are able, as to their relationships. We 

 cannot study their physiology, for they are dead ; we 

 may, however, draw some inferences as to their mode 

 of life from their structure. So far, palaeontology is 

 concerned with the same questions as recent Botany, 

 but we also have to study the succession of the strata 

 in which the fossils are found, and so to trace their 

 relative geological age, or, in other words, their distri- 

 bution in time. Inquiries of this kind are peculiar to 



