PREFACE 
In preparing the present volume, the aim of the writer has 
‘been to meet all the college entrance requirements and at the 
same time to bring the study of botany into closer touch with 
the practical business of life by stressing its relations with 
agriculture, economics, and, in certain of its aspects, with sani- 
tation. While technical language has been avoided so far 
as the requirements of scientific accuracy will permit, the 
student is not encouraged to shirk the use of necessary botani- 
cal terms, out of a mere superstitious fear of words because 
they happen to be a little new or unfamiliar. Such a practice 
not only leads to careless and inaccurate modes of expression, 
but tends to foster a slovenly habit of mind, and in the long run 
causes the waste of more time and labor in the search after 
roundabout, and often misleading, substitutes, than it would 
require to master the proper use of a few new words and 
phrases. 
In the choice of materials for experiment and illustration, 
the endeavor has been to call for such only as are familiar and 
easily obtained. The specimens for flower dissection have been 
selected mainly from common cultivated kinds, because their 
wide distribution makes them easy to obtain everywhere, while 
in cities and large towns they are practically the only specimens 
available. Another important consideration has been the desire 
to spare our native wild flowers, or at least not to hasten the 
extinction with which they are threatened by the ravages of Sun- 
day excursionists and summer tourists, to whose unthinking, 
but none the less destructive, incursions, the automobile has laid 
open the most secret haunts of nature. The influence of the 
public school teacher, and more especially the teacher of botany, 
is the most potent factor from which we can hope for aid in 
putting a stop to the relentless persecution that has practically 
exterminated many of our choicest wild plants and is fast 
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