Excerpt from Class Book of Botany: Being Outlines of the Structure, Physiology and Classification of Plants, With a Flora of All Parts of the United States and Canada

The class-book of Botany was first offered to the student in 1845. It was originally prepared with immediate reference to the wants of the author's own pupils, with scarcely a hope of approval from the community beyond. The event, however, proved that the wants of his own pupils were precisely the same as those of myriads of others and the use of the book, notwithstanding its numerous imperfections, soon became general.

The lapse of fifteen years has done much to develop not only the knowledge of our native Flora, but of the science of Botany in general; and materials for the revision of our whole work have indefinitely accumulated. In this revision, which seems to be demanded not less by the growing appreciation of scientific studies as a means of intel lectual and moral discipline, than by the progress of the science itself, we have still confined ourselves to the limits of a single volume, and sternly resolved against any essential enlargement, except such as the increased territory of our Flora requires. This we have done with direct reference to the convenience and the means of the thousands of youths who will still enter upon this delightful pursuit, and make their text-book their vade-mecum. The labor expended in this condensation will be appreciated by few, and those few, while they justify the mo tives, will regret the necessity.

The limit of our Flora in this new series has been much extended. It now embraces the territory lying East of the Mississippi River with the exception of the Southern Peninsula of Florida, and South of the Great Lakes and the River St. Lawrence. The States bordering upon the western shores of the Mississippi, although not strictly included, are essentially so, as well as those provinces of Canada upon the north ern shore of the St. Lawrence. This class-book is, therefore, now professedly adapted to the student's use from Quebec to New Orleans and from St. Pauls to St. Augustine.

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