Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Description and Physiological Botany, Vol. 3
Botany. - In the most extended sense of the term, Botany may be considered as embracing every inquiry which can be made into the various phenomena connected with one of the three great departments into which the study of nature is divided, and which is familiarly styled the Vegetable Kingdom. And this inquiry should extend as well to the investigation of the outward forms and conditions in which plants, whether recent or fossil, are met with, as to the exa mination of the various functions which they perform whilst in the living state, and to the laws by which their distribution on the earth's surface is regulated. We may conveniently arrange these several phenomena under two heads. The one may be called the Descriptive department of the science, being de voted to the examination, description, and classification of all the circumstances connected with the external configuration and internal structure of plants, which we here consider in much the same light as so many pieces of machinery, more or less complicated in their structure; but of whose several parts we must first obtain some general knowledge, before we can expect to understand their mode of operation, or to appreciate the ends which each was in tended to effect. In the Physiological, which is the other department, we consider these machines as it were in action and we are here to investigate the phenomena which result from the presence of the living principle, Operating in conjunction with the two forces of attraction and afinity, to which all natural bodies are subject.
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