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ON THE SCIENCE OP BOTANY. 
bloom freely, unless excited in a stove during the spring months. They will bear 
extremes, either of moisture or aridity, owing to the peculiar organisation of the 
vascular system of the foliage. 
The natural system refers the family to the order Apocynece, the juices of which 
furnish poison of very fatal character, acting chiefly on the nervous system. Caution 
ought, therefore, to be observed in tasting the fluids, which are yielded in abundance 
when the plants are cut or pruned. 
The odour of the sweet-scented oleander discovers the presence of vegetable 
Prussic acid. It appears by the test of any of the neutral salts of iron, that the 
elaborated sap contains the gallic acid, for ink is immediately formed, and with it a 
faint shade of blue is discernible, which seems to indicate the existence of an 
extremely small portion of free Prussiate, 
ON THE SCIENCE OF BOTANY, 
AS A NECESSARY STUDY FOR THE YOUNG GARDENER. 
The study of the vegetable kingdom is one of the most pleasing employments 
the mind of man is capable of enjoying ; contemplating nature in all the various 
seasons of the year, climbing the mountain or descending the vale, in the forest or 
in the mead, from the oak, whose majestic boughs tower toward the skies, to the 
moss, whose minute stem sports beneath its shade, everywhere there is something 
to amuse, in every thing something to instruct, something to aid us 
To look through nature up to nature's God. 
Surely he must be an unconscious observer who does not discover 
The work of an Almighty hand ! 
The study of botany being a great acquisition to the scientific knowledge of the 
young gardener, we hope in this and future communications to give the juvenile 
reader a succinct review of the Linnsean and natural systems of botany. It is natural 
to suppose the first questions that may arise in the mind of the young Tyro are 
these : — " What is botany, and what does it treat of?" The answer is short. Botany 
is that science which arranges and distinguishes all plants or vegetables, and teaches 
us their peculiar properties and uses. 
The vegetable kingdom is extremely numerous. Naturalists enumerate upwards 
of 30,000 species of plants, nor will this number be so very surprising when we con- 
sider that the whole surface of the earth is covered with them. About 2,000 of these 
are natives of our own isle, of which one third are mosses, ferns, sea- weeds, &c,, 
but more botanically speaking Cryptogamic plants. 
The honour of having first suggested the true sexual distinction in plants appears 
to be due to our own countryman Sir Thomas Millington, from whose hints Dr. 
