r has
prepared the present volume with a hope that it may serve the purpose
for which it is intended; viz., an introduction to the study of botany
for use in high schools especially, but sufficiently comprehensive to
serve also as a beginning book in most colleges.

It does not pretend to be a complete treatise of the whole science,
and this, it is hoped, will be sufficient apology for the absence from
its pages of many important subjects, especially physiological topics.
It was found impracticable to compress within the limits of a book of
moderate size anything like a thorough discussion of even the most
important topics of _all_ the departments of botany. As a thorough
understanding of the structure of any organism forms the basis of all
further intelligent study of the same, it has seemed to the author
proper to emphasize this feature in the present work, which is
professedly an _introduction_, only, to the science.

This structural work has been supplemented by so much classification
as will serve to make clear the relationships of different groups, and
the principles upon which the classification is based, as well as
enable the student to recognize the commoner types of the different
groups as they are met with. The aim of this book is not, however,
merely the identification of plants. We wish here to enter a strong
protest against the only too prevalent idea that the chief aim of
botany is the ability to run down a plant by means of an "Analytical
Key," the subject being exhausted as soon as the name of the plant is
discovered. A knowledge of the plant itself is far more important than
its name, however desirable it may be to know the latter.

In selecting the plants employed as examples of the different groups,
such were chosen, as far as possible, as are everywhere common. Of
course this was not always possible, as some important forms, _e.g._
the red and brown seaweeds, are necessarily not always readily
procurable by all students, but it will be found that the great
majority of the forms used, or closely related ones, are within the
reach of nearly all students; and such directions are given for
collecting and preserving them as will make it possible even for those
in the larger cities to supply themselves with the necessary
materials. Such directions, too, for the manipulation and examination
of specimens are given as will make the book, it is hoped, a
laboratory guide as well as a manual of classificatio