OUTLINES OF BOTANY. 
FROM MR. BENTHAM’S BRITISH AND COLONIAL FLORAS. 
Chap. I. Definitions and Descriptive Botany. 
1. The principal object of a Flora of a country is to afford the means of deter- 
mining (i.e., ascertaining the name of) any plant growing in it, whether for the 
purpose of ulterior study or of intellectual exercise. 
2. With this view, a Flora consists of descriptions of all the wild or native 
plants contained in the country in question, so drawn up and arranged that the 
student may identify with the corresponding description any individual specimen 
which he may gather. 
3. These descriptions should be clear , concise , accurate , and characteristic, so as 
that each one should be readily adapted to the plant it relates to, and to no other 
one; they should be as nearly as possible arranged under natural (184) divisions, so 
as to facilitate the comparison of each plant with those nearest allied to it ; and 
they should be accompanied by an artificial key or index, by means of which the 
student may be guided step by step in the observation of such peculiarities or 
characters in his plant as may lead him, with the least delay, to the individual 
description belonging to it. 
4. For descriptions to be clear and readily intelligible, they should be expressed 
as much as possible in ordinary well-established language. But, for the purpose 
of accuracy, it is necessary not only to give a more precise technical meaning to 
many terms used more or less vaguely in common conversation, but also to intro- 
duce purely technical names for such parts of plants or forms as are of little im- 
portance except to the botanist. In the present chapter it is proposed to define 
such technical or technically limited terms as are made use of in these Floras. 
5. At the same time mathematical accuracy must not be expected. The forms 
and appearances assumed by plants and their parts are infinite. Names cannot 
be invented for all ; those even that have been proposed are too numerous for 
ordinary memories. Many are derived from supposed resemblances to well-known 
forms or objects. These resemblances are differently appreciated by different 
persons, and the same term is not only differently applied by different botanists, 
but it frequently happens that the same writer is led on different occasions to give 
somewhat different meanings to the same word. The botanist’s endeavours should 
always be, on the one hand, to make as near an approach to precision as circum- 
stances will allow ; and, on the other hand, to avoid that prolixity of 'detail and 
overloading with technical terms which tends rather to confusion than clearness. 
In this he will be more or less successful. The aptness of a botanical description, 
like the beauty of a work of imagination, will always vary with the style and 
genius of the author. 
§ 1. The Plant in General. 
6. The Plant in its botanical sense, includes every being which has vegetable 
life , from the loftiest tree which adorns our landscapes, to the humblest moss which 
grows on its stem, to the mould or fungus which attacks our provisions, or the 
green scum that floats on our ponds. 
