Book Description

Excerpt from Descriptive Botany: A Practical Guide, to the Classification of Plants, With a Popular Flora The First Book of Botany, published in 1870, was prepared as a contribution to better methods in object teaching. It was not designed as a text-book of Botany but plants were chosen as objects of study, because they offer special and unequaled advantages for training in Oh servation. It provided that the whole work of the learner should be upon his specimens; that he should find out and record the plant-characters for himself, and thus get ima\ portant practice in self-education. But it was soon seen that, in thus cultivating the ob serving powers, we were laying the true foundation for a real knowledge of Botanical Science; and the desire was often expressed that this method of studying plants should be carried out more fully. Accordingly, the Second Book of Botany was prepared upon the same plan. It has, however, been found desirable, for the sake of beginners in the science who are too old for primary lessons, that the abridged contents of the First Book should be pre fixed to the Second Book, and also that completeness as a Descriptive Botany should be given to the work, by adding to it a popular Flora. In thus combining the exer cises of the former volumes, they have not been materially changed. They provide for the direct study of all those features of plants which are used in classification, and illustrate by practical examples the use to be made of these observations in systematic botany. The ideas given in those works, concerning the value of this Study in men tal training, are therefore equally applicable here. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.