AN

INTRODUCTION

TO

BOTANY.

BY

JOHN LINDLEY, PH. D. F.R.S. AND L.S.

CORRESP. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACAD. SC. BERL, AND ROYAL HORT.
SOC. LIÉGE; HONORARY MEMBER OF THE BATAV. SOC. SC., NAT. HIST.
SOC. HAMB., LYC. NAT. HIST. N. YORK, AND HORT. SOC. OF BERLIN, N.
YORK, TORONTO, ETC.; MEMBER OF THE IMP. ACAD. NAT. CUR., LINN.
SOC. STOCKH., BOT. SOC. RATISB., PHYSIOGR. SOC. LUND., ETC.; VICE-
SECRETARY OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN,
TO THE SOCIETY OF APOTHECARIES, AND IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE,

LONDON.

With Sir Capper-Plates and numerous Wood-Engravings.

THIRD EDITION,

WITH CORRECTIONS AND NUMEROUS ADDITIONS.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,

PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1839.

PREFACE.

ABOUT three centuries have 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. Little was known of Vegetable Physiology, nothing of Vegetable Anatomy, and even the mode 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 intellectual branches of natural philosophy.

It now comprehends a knowledge not only of the names and uses of plants, but of their external and internal organisation, their anatomy and physiological phenomena: it involves the consideration of the plan upon which those multitudes of vegetable forms that clothe the earth have been created, of the 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 exercised by climate upon their developement; and, lastly, from botany as now understood, in its most