Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/12

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vi
PREFACE

and that something else is wanting. If we examine the mass of introductory books on botany in this light, we shall find them in some cases too elaborate and intricate, in others too obscure and imperfect: they are also deficient in that very pleasing and instructive part of botany, the anatomy and physiology of plants. There are indeed works, such as Rose's Elements of Botany, and Darwin's Phytologia, with which no such faults can be found. The former is a compendium of Linnæan learning, the latter a store of ingenious philosophy; but they were designed for philosophers, and are not calculated for every reader. Linnæus and his scholars have generally written in Latin. They addressed themselves to physicians, to anatomists, to philosophers, little thinking that their science would ever be the amusing pursuit of the young, the elegant and the refined, or they would