iii 
the first volume is now completed, would not be unacceptable in the present 
condition of the public mind. It seemed to him that there was no work which 
precisely combined accurate scientific instruction, with an occasional appeal to 
the imagination, and to the moral and religious feelings. The manner in 
which he has attempted this has been chiefly by noticing such physiological 
phenomena as the plant under description seemed naturally to force upon the 
attention; for nothing is so sels to aes us with a deep sense of ee 
in the contrivance,as th ity of th lts obtained b 
its instrumentality. In the ped of life we give credit to the mechanic in pro- 
portion as he constructs a machine which performs its work with accuracy and 
precision ; and so as we extend our knowledge of the various functions of vege- 
tation, all of them the consequences of that mysterious vital action which is the 
common moving power to all machinery of organized beings, our wonder and 
admiration increases. As auxiliaries te his cause the Conductor has intersper- 
sed quotations from those poets and other authors, who have alluded to objects 
of Natural History in their writings. There are other Botanical periodicals of 
long established reputation, conducted by individuals of the highest scientific 
merit as Botanists, but their pages are devoted, almost exclusively, to systema- 
tic details, and seldom admit any reference to more general views and specula- 
tions. There are other works professing the same object, but of inferior?repu- 
tation, and to which we are unwilling to refer in terms of dispraise. The posi- 
tion in which we have endeavoured to place the Boranist with respect to other 
periodicals of the same class, is one in which it is presumed that it cannot be 
considered to interfere with the peculiar claims of any. As regards the execu- 
tion of the plates and the ee of their spre we will venture to assert 
o e + 
before the public. We hope too that ae a gk 
i a 
that the Boranisr will stand ad ison with work now 
less acctrate and valuable for the use of the proficient hissed, than those in 
-works of an exclusively scientific character, at the same time as such descrip- 
tions are made explicit, by translations, to the merely English reader. We 
have also endeavoured so to classify our miscellaneous information as to give 
to it uniformity of arrangement and facility of reference. Further, we claim 
for ourselves the peculiarity of attempting to assist the less scientific reader by 
the introduction of numerous wood cuts which accompany the letter-press, 
whereby some of the prominent features of both the natural and artificial sys- 
tems are continually kept under the eye of the reader, and will be rendered fa- 
miliar to him without application for that particular purpose. The Guipe or 
