THE ELEMENTS 



or 



STRUCTURAL BOTANY. 



1. The study of Botany is commonly rendered unat- 

 tractive to the beginner by the order in which the parts 

 of the subject are presented to him. His patience be- 

 comes exhausted by, the long interval which must neces- 

 sarily elapse before he is in a position to do any practical 

 work for himself. In accordance with the usual plan, 

 some months are spent in committing to memory a mass 

 of terms descriptive of the various modifications which 

 the organs of plants undergo ; and not until the student 

 has mastered these, and perhaps been initiated into the 

 mysteries of the fibro-vascular system, is he permi^ited to 

 examine a plant as a, wh6le.^ In this little work, we 

 purpose, following the example of some recent writers, 

 to reverse this order of things, ~ahd-at the outset to put 

 into the learner's hands some common plants, and to 

 lead . him, by his own examination of these, to a know- 

 ledge of their various organs — to cultivate, in short, not 

 merely his memory, but also, and chiefly, his powers of 

 observation. 



