2 
BOTANY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 
they grow, — how varied, how numerous, and how elegant they are, and with what 
exquisite skill they are fashioned and adorned, — we shall surely find it profitable 
and pleasant to learn the lessons which they teach. 
Now this considering of plants inquiringly and intelligently is the study of 
Botany. It is an easy study, when pursued in the right way and with diligent 
attention. There is no difficulty in understanding how plants grow, and are nour¬ 
ished by the ground, the rain, and the air; nor in learning what their parts are, 
and how they are adapted to each other and to the way the plant lives. And any 
young person who will take some pains about it may learn to distinguish all our 
common plants into their kinds,, and find out their names. 
Interesting as this study is to all, it must be particularly so to Young People. 
It appeals to their natural curiosity, to their lively desire of knowing about things: 
it calls out and directs (i. e. educates) their powers of observation, and is adapted 
to sharpen and exercise, in a very pleasant way, the faculty of discrimination. To 
learn how to observe and how to distinguish things correctly, is the greater part of 
education, and is that in which people otherwise well educated are apt to be sur¬ 
prisingly deficient. Natural objects, everywhere present and endless in variety, 
afford the best field for practice; and the study when young, first of Botany, and 
afterwards of the other Natural Sciences, as they are called, is the best train¬ 
ing that can be in these respects. This study ought to begin even before the 
study of language. For to distinguish things scientifically (that is, carefully and 
accurately) is simpler than to distinguish ideas. And in Natural History* the 
learner is gradually led from the observation of things, up to the study of ideas or 
the relations of things. 
This book is intended to teach Young People how to begin to read, with pleasure 
and advantage, one large and easy chapter in the open Book of Nature; namely, 
that in which the wisdom and goodness *of the Creator are plainly written in the 
Vegetable Kingdom.* 
* Natural History is the study of the productions of the earth in their natural state, whether minerals, 
plants, or animals. These productions make up what are called the Three Kingdoms of Nature , viz.: — 
1. The Mineral Kingdom , which consists of the Minerals (earths, metals, crystals, &c.) ; bodies not 
endowed with life. 
2. The Vegetable Kingdom , which comprehends Vegetables or Plants. 
3. The Animal Kingdom , which comprehends all Animals. 
The natural history of the mineral kingdom is named Mineralogy. 
The natural history of the vegetable kingdom is Botany, — the subject of this book. 
The natural history of the animal kingdom is named Zoology. 
