LATE WILLIAM CURTIS. XVii 
the pleasing satisfaction of seeing it become productive of 
national utility, that time he shall think usefully employed, 
and that attention most happily bestowed. 
** The more effectually to succeed in promoting: the 
knowledge previously recommended as so essential to the 
interests of individuals and the community at large, he has 
selected from the boundless field of vegetable productions, 
certain classes of plants, universally acknowledged to be 
either the most useful, or the most necessary to be known ; 
by which means the student’s attention is more immediately 
directed to the objects of his pursuit. These are the Me- 
dicinal, Culimary, Poisonous, Agricultural, and British 
plants ; all of which classes are kept in separate and dis- 
tinct quarters, expressed in the plan of the garden. To 
these are added two other quarters; the one containing 
such plants as are calculated to instruct the student in the 
principles of the Linnean system, being living examples 
of most of his classes and orders; the other furnished with 
hardy, ornamental flowers and shrubs, chiefly exotic, and 
cultivated in the gardens of the curious. 
« As the practical part of Botany, as well as of every 
other science, is the most useful, so it is presumed, the 
mode of communicating this knowledge is such as will 
meet with general approbation : this is effected by having 
the generic and trivial name of each plant, according to 
Linneus, painted in a legible hand, and affixed to it ; and 
that none may lose the advantage of acquiring a know- 
ledge of plants from a non-acquaintance with Latin, the 
English names also are added, with a view, that Botany, 
in this familiar dress, might be instructive to those whom 
the bare mention of a long hard-sounding Latin name 
might tend to discourage. And the author is ready to 
flatter himself that many persons, who are naturally fond 
of plants and flowers, will be ready to encourage an under- 
taking of this kind; by which, at the same time that they 
