A Grammar of Botany Author:James Edward Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. The intention of the present volume is not only to supply some deficiencies, in a work of the same author, entitled An Introduction to Physiological ... more »and Systematical Botany; but also to follow up its design, by additional information ; especially on the subject of the natural classification, or affinities, of plants. The reception of that elementary treatise has been such, as to make it incumbent on the author to neglect no opportunity of being further useful. Yet he has not thought proper to add any new matter to the successive editions of his book, which the possessors of the original might not obtain in a separate form. The fourth edition, which, besides an American one, is now before the publick, has therefore merely received such emendations and corrections as were necessary to prevent mistakes. The popularity and success of the former work have, as usual, called forth many labourers into the same field. Some of these, though borrowing from it with unsparing hands, have thought proper to vary the form of their instructions; partly perhaps to conceal that want of originality, which generally enfeebles all compilations; and partly to tempt weak or sickly appetites, which have no previous taste for the invigorating food of real knowledge. It is a commendable intention to lure such triflers, by tales or dialogues, to more solid reading, and more efficient instruction. I mean not to discommend or undervalue any of these humble attempts; but the subject must not be reduced to their level. The only radical fault in compilers, especially of elementary scientific instruction, is their inability to appreciate what is most important to teach or to enforce. Hence they encumber themselves, and alarm beginners, with loads of unmeaning names, and of useless, or discarded, ter...« less