16 FLOKA INDICA. 



if not so complex as that of zoology, is more difficult at the 

 outset, from the want of standards of comparison between the 

 organs of plants and those he is familiar with in himself as a 

 member of the sister kingdom. Applying these remarks to 

 practice, the botanical student finds that he has much to un- 

 learn at the very outset ; in many cases he has misapplied the 

 terms root, stem, leaf, etc., and contracted most erroneous 

 ideas of their structure and functions ; while he is startled to 

 find that the popular divisions of plants into trees, shrubs, 

 and herbs, — leafy and leafless, water and land, erect, climbing, 

 or creeping,— are valueless even as guides to the elements of 

 the science. 



It is not however to be supposed, because pure physiology 

 is of secondary importance to the right understanding of the 

 afiinities of plants, that botany is therefore a less noble or 

 philosophical study than zoology; since we find anatomy, de- 

 velopment, and morphology, occupying a very far higher rank 

 in proportion. Being deprived, as he is in most cases, of all 

 technical aids to the determination even of the commoner 

 exotic natural families, the systematist is compelled to com- 

 mence with the knife and microscope, and can never relinquish 

 these implements. Systematic Botany is indeed based upon 

 development ; and no one can peruse, however carelessly, the 

 most terse diagnosis of a natural order or genus of plants, 

 without being struck with the variety and extent of know- 

 ledge embodied as essential to its definition and recognition. 

 Not only are the situation and form, division or multiplica- 

 tion, relative arrest or growth, of the individual organs ex- 

 actly defined, in strictly scientific and scrupulously accurate 

 language, but the development of each is recorded from an 

 early stage : the vernation and stipulation of the leaves ; the 

 aestivation of the young calyx and corolla, and their duration 

 relatively to other organs ; the development and cohesion of 

 the stamens; the position and insertion of the anther; its 

 pollen; the cohesion or separation of the carpels, and the 

 stages of their development from the bud to the mature fruit, 



