AN

INTRODUCTION

TO

BOTANY.

A

LONDON:

Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoode,

New-Street-Square.

AN

INTRODUCTION

TO

BOTANY.

BIP

BY

JOHN LINDLEY, F.R.S. L.S. G.S.

MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY NATURE CURIOSORUM; OF THE
BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF RATISBON; OF THE PHYSIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
OF LUND; OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF BERLIN; HONORARY
MEMBER OF THE LYCEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK; AS-
SISTANT SECRETARY OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,
ETC. ETC.;

AND PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY

OF LONDON.

With Six Copper-Plates and numerous Wood-Engravings.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMAN,

PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1832.

PREFACE.

Two hundred and ninety years have now elapsed since one of the earliest introductions to Botany upon record was published, in four pages folio, by Leonhart Fuchs, a learned physician of Tubingen. At that period Botany was nothing more than the art of distinguishing one plant from another, and of remembering the medical qualities, sometimes real, but more frequently imaginary, which experience, or error, or superstition, had ascribed to them. was known of Vegetable Physiology, nothing of Vegetable Anatomy, and even the art of arranging species systematically had still to be discovered; while scarcely a trace existed of those modern views which have raised the science from the mere business of the herb-gatherer to a station among the most intel lectual branches of natural philosophy.

Little

It now comprehends a knowledge not only of the names and uses of plants, but of their external and internal organisation, and of their anatomy and physiological phenomena; it embraces a consideration of the plan upon which those multitudes of vegetable forms that clothe the earth have been created, of the skilful combinations out of which so many various organs have emanated, of the laws that regulate the dispersion and location of species, and of the influence that climate exercises upon their developement;