PREFACE. . IX 



pretensions ; and, certainly, there is no other work 

 hitherto published in this country, which can be con- 

 sidered as surpassing these in that higher species of 

 merit to which allusion is now made. 



At the same time, it is evidently a matter of much 

 importance, that a complete and well executed sys- 

 tem of Physiological Botany should exist. The vege- 

 table w^orld comprehends many of the most interest- 

 ing and beautifvd productions of Nature ; and beside 

 those who are professedly engaged in the study of 

 these productions, there are so many persons who take 

 an interest in some one or other of the forms which 

 the vegetable world assumes, and which we have at 

 all moments before us and around us, — that there is 

 perhaps no part of science in which the want of just 

 and comprehensive views must be more generally or 

 constantly felt. 



To execute such a work, however, requires talents 

 which are not always found united in the same person. 

 Its successful accomplishment requires, in the first 

 place, that he who devotes himself to it should be ac- 

 quainted with a vast body of knowledge, which can now 

 only be acquired by the study of innumerable works, 

 which are often difficult to be procured, and laborious 

 in the perusal, — with a multitude of facts of the most 

 interesting kind indeed, but which are either buried 

 in the obscurity of volumes that have long been laid 

 aside, or which lie dispersed among the occasional pro- 

 ductions of those Travellers and Natural Historians, 



