PREFACE 
NEARLY thirty-nine years ago Dr M. C. Cooxr published his 
“Manual,” which reached a second edition nine years afterwards. 
Since then no botanic dictionary has been published in Britain, 
while during the period which has passed since then botany has 
undergone a momentous change. While systematic botany has 
been actively prosecuted, the other departments of morphology, 
physiology and minute anatomy have been energetically pursued 
by the help of improved appliances and methods of investigation. 
One result has been a large increase of technical terms, which are 
only partially accounted for in the various text-books. The time 
seemed therefore ripe for a new Glossary which should include 
these terms, and, encouraged by the help of many botanic friends, 
I have drawn up the present volume. After the work had been 
partly written, and announced for publication, Mr Crozier’s 
“ Dictionary ” first came under my notice. I have consequently 
compared it with my manuscript, and inserted many words which 
had not come within my knowledge, or had been rejected by me, 
as will be seen by the acknowledgment in each case. Mr Heinig’s 
“Glossary” only reached London after the early sheets were 
printed. 
The task of selecting what terms should be included in any 
branch of science offers many difficulties: in the case of botany, 
it is closely linked on with zoology and general biology, with 
geology as regards fossil plants, with pharmacy, chemistry, and 
the cultivation of plants in the garden or the field. How far it 
is advisable to include terms from those overlapping sciences 
which lie on the borderland is a question on which no two 
people might think alike. I have given every word an indepen- 
dent examination, so as to take in all which seemed needful, 
all, in fact, which might be fairly expected, and yet to exclude 
technical terms which really belong to another science. Words 
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