Xii PREFACE. 



of vegetable bodies, among all the liberal and en- 

 lightened classes of the community. 



The reader must have already perceived, that the 

 work is the joint production of two authors, the first 

 three parts being extracted from the " Theorie Ele- 

 mentaire de la Botanique," of DeCandolle, publish- 

 ed at Paris 1819, and all the rest being furnished by 

 Sprengel, who superintended the publication of 

 the whole. The separate merits of the style of these 

 two authors may not perhaps be discernible in the 

 translation ; but in the original these merits are 

 strongly marked ; and, as De Candolle is distin- 

 guished by the subtlety, the flexibility and metaphy- 

 sical cast of his expression, Spiiengel seems to pos- 

 sess a style, occasionally abrupt indeed, but always 

 luminous, condensed, and bearing evident marks of a 

 mind of no common powers. 



Respecting the merits of the translation, it is not to 

 be expected that any thing should here be said :-— 

 fidelity and perspicuity are all that have been aimed 

 at, and with the attainment of these the Translator 

 would be satisfied. But, in a work involving so many 

 technical terms, and so much recondite learning, — in 

 which the views exhibited are sometimes such, as 

 even well informed botanists were not formerly ac- 

 quainted with, — and in which, along with many facts 

 borrowed from microscopical observations, there are 

 occasionally reasonings as subtle as any that are to 

 be found in our most ingenious systems of metaphy- 



