Outlines of the history of botany / R.J. Harvey-Gibson.

  • Harvey-Gibson, R. J. (Robert John), 1860-1929.
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Outlines of the history of botany / R.J. Harvey-Gibson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE The following brief sketch of the history of botany makes no claim to originality save in the mode of presentation of the subject-matter. It comprises the substance of a course of lectures given to students of the University of Liverpool during their third year of residence, and has for its object the discussion of the more important features in the advance of botanical knowledge from the earliest times down to, approximately, the present day. The ordinary university student, in the course of an already overcrowded curriculum, has only the minimum of time to devote to the study of the history of the science, and not always the knowledge or experience requisite to form a proper estimate of the relative values of the results achieved by the numberless investigators whose names appear on the pages of the larger text-books, still less to picture for himself in correct perspective, the evolution of the science as a whole. These lectures, it is hoped, may in some measure aid him in attaining these ends, so far as the history of botany is concerned. Much has been omitted that another writer might have included ; exigencies of time and space must serve as excuse for such omissions. Some aspects of the subject have been expanded, not unduly it is hoped, that others might prefer to treat more briefly or to omit altogether ; that must be put down to individual idiosyncrasy on the Vll