IV PREFACE. 



The authors whose works have chiefly afforded the varied materials of this 

 volume, are so generally referred to in the pages of the work, that it will be 

 unnecessary to recapitulate them in this place, farther than to state, that to the 

 French work of the younger Eichard on Physiological Botany; to Sprengel, 

 Mirbel, De Candolle, Dutrochet, Keith, Lindley, &c., frequent reference has been 

 made. 



In the practical and ornamental departments, much assistance has also been 

 obtained from Loudon's highly useful works on Botany and Horticulture. 



WILLIAM EHIND. 



PEEFATOEY NOTE TO THIS EDITION. 



In this re-issue considerable improvement has been made on the wood engrav- 

 ings interspersed throughout the text; and Twenty-nine new plates have 

 been added to the original series. Seven of these illustrate groups of plants, 

 including pines, palms, cacti, tree ferns, Australian trees and shrubs, and the 

 characteristic features of a tropical forest. The remaining twenty-tvjo are 

 coloured after nature, and present faithful representations of plants important 

 for their uses to man; comprising such as are most extensively used in medicine 

 and the arts, and those from which food, spices, and clothing materials are 

 obtained. The plants figured in the new plates, so far as not previously noticed 

 in the body of the work, are described in an Appendix, in which the portion on 

 Australian plants, contributed by a botanist long resident in these colonies, is 

 new and of much interest. Eeferences will be found in the list of illustrations 

 to the pages in which the various figures are described. 



Glasgow, 1855. 



