VUl INTRODUCTION. 



being acoomplished, their beautiful and evanescent forms de- 

 cay, they become disorganized, the pile of matter falls, and is 

 restored by the operation of the common laws of chemical at- 

 traction to the earth and air from which it was taken. 



We are accustomed to admire the magnificent spectacle of 

 the starry heavens; but let us look on the earth, at the splen- 

 dors of the vegetable creation. Prom the lowly Moss which 

 raises its little sporangia hardly an inch above the ground, and 

 covers with its minute, but exquisitely beautiful foliage, the 

 rugged rocks and the bark of trees, to the noble arborescent 

 Ferns of the tropics, from whose lofty summit a magnificent 

 bouquet of gigantic fronds is gracefully pendent; from the 

 little inconspicuous aquatic plant, called the Duokmeat, which 

 covers the surface of the pools and stagnant waters with its 

 soumlike vegetation, to the splendid Victoria Regia, the queen 

 of water-lilies, cradled in the rolling billows of the mighty 

 Amazon — what differences in size ! what an advance in organic 

 development ! Yet nature has every intermediate variety of 

 organization, passing, as we shall presently show, from the 

 utmost simplicity to the sublimest grandeur of vegetable 

 structure, through a beautiful and highly instructive series of 

 transition-forms. 



The forms of life called Plants deserve every attention. 

 Botany is not a mere accomplishment, but an important 

 branch of education. If it be true, as some philosophers have 

 asserted, that the whole chain of organic being, from man 

 down to the humble spire of grass, is only a manifestation of 

 life in different degrees of development, then are we all per- 

 sonally interested in this inquiry. It is in plants that mineral 



