ELEMENTS OF BOTANY. 



. Section I. INTRODUCTOKY. 



1. Botany is the name of the science of the vegetable kingdom in 

 general ; that is, of plants. 



2. Plants may be studied as to their kinds and relationships. This 

 study is Systematic Botany. An enumeration of the kinds of vegetables, 

 as far as known, classified according to their various degrees of resemblance 

 or difference, constitutes a general System of plants. A similar account of 

 the vegetables of any particular country or district is called a Flora. 



3. Plants may be studied as to their structure and parts. This is 

 Structural Botany, or Organography. The study of the organs or 

 parts of plants in regard to the different forms and different uses which 

 the same kind of organ may assume, — the comparison, for instance, of 

 a flower-leaf or a bud-scale with a common leaf, — is Vegetable Mor- 

 phology, or Morphological Botany. The study of the minute structure 

 of the parts, to learn by the microscope what they themselves are formed 

 of, is Vegetable Anatomy, or Histology ; in other words, it is Micro- 

 scopical Structural Botany. The study of the actions of plants or of their 

 parts, of the ways in which a plant lives, grows, and acts, is the province 

 of Physiological Botany, or Vegetable Physiology. 



4. This book is to teach the outlines of Structural Botany and of the 

 simpler parts of the physiology of plants, that it may be known how 

 plants are constructed and adapted to their surroundings, and how they 

 iive, move, propagate, and have their being in an existence no less real, 

 although more simple, than that of the animal creation which they support. 

 Particularly, this book is to teach the principles of the structure and rela- 

 tionships of plants, the nature and names of their parts and their modifica- 

 tions, and so to prepare for the study of Systematic Botany ; in which the 

 learner may ascertain the name and the place in the system of any or all 

 of the ordinary plants within reach, whether wild or cultivated. And in 

 ascertaining the name of any plant, the student, if rightly taught, will come 

 to know all about its general or particular structure, rank, and relationship 

 to other plants. 



