Alphabet of botany, for the use of beginners / by James Rennie.

  • Rennie, James, 1787-1867
Date:
MDCCCXXXIV [1834]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alphabet of botany, for the use of beginners / by James Rennie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    smallest flower, up to the mountain range and the expanded firmament, the interpretation thereof has rushed irresistibly into my mind,— “The hand that made us is Divine.”—^Addison. The following little book, then, is intended to assist beginners, who' commence, as I myself did, without any instructor, and who may find, as I did, that all the ordinary books, purporting to be elementary intro- ductions, are written on the principle of the student knowing a great deal before he begins; or rather of the authors being seemingly afraid of vulgarising their science by making it too plain. Having no fear of this kind, but rather that of not being plain enough, I shall never he deterred from resorting to the plainest and most homely language, in order to be as intelligible as possible. The chief feature, however, that distinguishes the present httle book is, that it is not confined to the mere exposition of a system. Most of the elementary works on Botany are limited to illustrations of the Linnsean System, and a few comprehend also the Jussieuan System; but whilst I have introduced out- lines of both these systems, I have, at the same time, placed more prominently the most important parts of the science connected with Structure, Fructification, and Germination. I have further rejected the modem fanciful nonsense of every part of a plant being only a metamorphosed leaf. (See page 153.) It has been very injurious to the genuine science of Botany, that it has been recently fashionable to place the names of mere systematic Botanists so much higher than those who study the superior branches of the science, as to cause the latter to be thereby much over- looked and neglected. The great masters of philoso- phical Botany, whose works I earnestly request the student to peruse, are Grew, Malpighi, Leuwenhoeck, Ray, Micheli, Reichel, HiU, Saussure, Bonnet, Du