INTRODUCTOET EEMARKS. 



It has too often been supposed that the principal object of Botany- 

 is to give names to the vegetable productions of the globe, and to 

 arrange them in such a way that these names may be easily found 

 out. This is a most erroneous view of the science, and one which 

 was perhaps fostered by some of the advocates of the Linnsean 

 system. The number of species collected by a botanist is not 

 considered now-a-days as a measure of his acquirements, and 

 names and classifications are only the mechanism by means of 

 which the true principles of the science are elicited. The views 

 in regard to a natural system proposed by Eay and Jussieu did 

 much to emancipate Botany from the trammels of artificial 

 methods, and to place it in its proper rank as a science. Their 

 labours have been ably carried out by De CandoUe, Brown, End- 

 Hcher, Lindley, Hooker, Arnott, Bentham, and others. The 

 relative importance of the different organs of plants, their 

 structure, development, and metamorphoses, are now studied 

 upon philosophical principles. The researches of G-audichaud, 

 Mirbel, and Trecul, as to the structure and formation of wood ; 

 the observations of Schleiden, Schwann, and Mohl on cell-develop- 

 ment ; the investigations of Brown, Schleiden, Fritzsche, Amioi, 

 Hofmeister, Tulasne, Darwin, Strasburger, Pringsheim, Cohn, Her- 

 mann Miiller, and others, into the functions of the pollen, the 

 fertilisation of plants, both phanerogamous and cryptogamous, the 

 development of the ovule and spore, and the formation of the 

 embryo ; the experiments of Schultz, Decaisne, and Thuret, on 

 the movements observed in the cells, vessels, and spores of plants, 

 and various other physiological inquiries, have promoted much 

 our knowledge of the alliances and affinities of plants. Thus the 

 labours of vegetable anatomists and physiologists all tend to give 



