ELEMENTS OF BOTANY, STRUCTURAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, SYSTEMATICAL, AND MEDICAL; BEING A FOURTH EDITION OF THE OUTLINE OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. BY JOHN LINDLEY, PH.D. F.R.S. VICE-SECRETARY OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON; PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, LONDON: PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND WALTON, BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS TO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, UPPER GOWER STREET. 1841. PREFACE. THE work now laid before the public is a fourth edition of the Author's "Outline of the First Principles of Botany," much extended and, it is hoped, improved. That work was written for the use of students, and entirely for the purpose of enabling them to fix correctly in their minds the more important points which the teacher brings before them in an academical course. When facts are mixed up with extended discussions, and rapidly adverted to, either in a lecture-room or in a written dissertation, the beginner is apt to lose sight of the exact nature of an argument, and is unable to distinguish with certainty the points upon which it is most material for him to fix his attention. That there existed a want of such a work has been sufficiently proved by the many editions the original Outline has passed through, in various European languages: indeed, while the present new edition is in the press, advice has been received of the translation of the work into Hungarian. The propositions which it contained were such as it is of the most indispensable importance for a student to understand; and were all, apparently, deducible from the evidence which had at that time been collected by Botanists. -The wish of the Author was to sketch a slight but accurate outline, the details of which were to be filled up by the reader himself, who, for this purpose, was referred to the Author's more extended Introductions to Botany. The original" Outline" contained nothing more than the fundamental propositions upon which the principles of Organic and Physiological Botany depend; but, when two editions. had been exhausted, the Author was induced, by the favour with which the book had been received, and by its recognized utility, notwithstanding its many defects, to combine with it a |