INTRODUCTION. 3 



appear lovely and captivating, without adorning herself 

 with the false tinsel of those conscious or unconscious 

 falsehoods, which would substitute poetry for thought, 

 imagination for knowledge, or dreams for truths. I have 

 endeavoured to adorn these essays with as many graces 

 as my imperfect aesthetic culture enabled me to impart, but 

 that it has not been my intention to enter the lists with 

 those masters of language, need scarcely be mentioned. 

 I believe, however, that if men of science would more 

 often seek to introduce truth into society, in fair attire, 

 the path of that intolerable, mystical and pretentious, 

 empty chattering, would be more effectually arrested than 

 by any rational argumentation against it. The Germans have 

 too sound a, judgment, too pure a taste, not to prefer, with- 

 out much hesitation, the true and valuable to empty straw, 

 if the two be but offered them in equally palatable form. 



With regard to the contents of the individual Lectures, 

 from the circumstances under which they originated, each is 

 of course complete in itself and independent of the others, 

 at the same time a kind of thread runs through all, essen- 

 tially connecting them. I may be allowed perhaps to make 

 this more evident by presenting it here in an isolated form. 



The vegetable world, if it be but looked upon as some- 

 thing more than the materials for a herbarium, offers so 

 many points of contact to the human race, that those who 

 devote themselves to its study, instead of having to 

 complain of want of material, become oppressed with the 

 multitude of interesting questions and problems which 

 crowd upon them. The different subjects of consideration 

 may be conveniently arranged under four aspects ; firstly, 

 the condition of the plant itself as a question of scientific 

 inquiry ; secondly, the relations of the individual plants to 

 each other ; thirdly, the relations of plants as organisms to 



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