any particular country or district is
called a _Flora_.

3. Plants may be studied as to their structure and parts. This is
STRUCTURAL BOTANY, or ORGANOGRAPHY. The study of the organs or parts of
plants in regard to the different forms and different uses which the
same kind of organ may assume,--the comparison, for instance, of a
flower-leaf or a bud-scale with a common leaf,--is VEGETABLE MORPHOLOGY,
or MORPHOLOGICAL BOTANY. The study of the minute structure of the parts,
to learn by the microscope what they themselves are formed of, is
VEGETABLE ANATOMY, or HISTOLOGY; in other words, it is Microscopical
Structural Botany. The study of the actions of plants or of their parts,
of the ways in which a plant lives, grows, and acts, is the province of
PHYSIOLOGICAL BOTANY, or VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY.

4. This book is to teach the outlines of Structural Botany and of the
simpler parts of the physiology of plants, that it may be known how
plants are constructed and adapted to their surroundings, and how they
live, move, propagate, and have their being in an existence no less
real, although more simple, than that of the animal creation which they
support. Particularly, this book is to teach the principles of the
structure and relationships of plants, the nature and names of their
parts and their modifications, and so to prepare for the study of
Systematic Botany; in which the learner may ascertain the name and the
place in the system of any or all of the ordinary plants within reach,
whether wild or cultivated. And in ascertaining the name of any plant,
the student, if rightly taught, will come to know all about its general
or particular structure, rank, and relationship to other plants.

5. The vegetable kingdom is so vast and various, and the difference is
so wide between ordinary trees, shrubs, and herbs on the one hand, and
mosses, moulds, and such like on the other, that it is hardly possible
to frame an intelligible account of plants as a whole without
contradictions or misstatements, or endless and troublesome
qualifications. If we say that plants come from seeds, bear flowers, and
have roots, stems, and leaves, this is not true of the lower orders. It
is best for the beginner, therefore, to treat of the higher orders of
plants by themselves, without particular reference to the lower.

6. Let it be understood, accordingly, that there is a higher and a lower
series of plants; namely:--

PHANEROGAMOUS PLANTS, which come