Volume 1

The British flora, or, Genera and species of British plants : arranged after the reformed sexual system and illustrated by numerous tables, and dissections / by Robert John Thorton.

  • Thornton, Robert John, 1768?-1837.
Date:
1812
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The British flora, or, Genera and species of British plants : arranged after the reformed sexual system and illustrated by numerous tables, and dissections / by Robert John Thorton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ¥11 the extensive system of the vegetable kingdom, in the manner as at present taught, and has traced this system through its various connexions and relations, either descending from generals to particulars, or ascending by a gradual progress from individuals to classes, till it embraces the whole vegetable world, will, by the mere exercise of the faculties employed for this purpose, acquire an habit of arrangement, a perception of order, of dis¬ tinction, and subordination, which it is not perhaps in the nature of any other study so effectually to bestow. In this view the examination of the vegetable kingdom seems peculiarly proper for youth; to whose unperverted minds the study of natural ob¬ jects is always an interesting occupation, and who will not only find in this employment an innocent and an healthful amusement, but will familiarise themselves to that regulated train of ideas, that perception of relation between parts and the whole, which is of use not only in every other department of natural knowledge, but in all the concerns of life/' * I have thought it right to make the student’s first step in Practical Botany, the knowledge of those plants, which are the produce of our own climate; for it seemed to me highly reason¬ able to become first acquainted with Indigenous Platits before wet cultivate Exotic Botany, u A knowledge of the plants of our own country f says the learned, and illustrious, Dr. Smithy in his English Botany, “ is in many respects even preferable to that of exotics, as it can be more readily and completely attained, and is on several accounts more directly useful. - * Roscoe, of Liverpool.