Excerpt from Chapters in Modern Botany This little book makes no attempt to condense a survey of its science; even within the fields through which it passes it seeks only to be suggestive, not exhaustive; its chapters have actually grown out of the syllabus and notes of University Extension Lectures, with their necessary limitations. In matter and form its appeal is to the general reader; yet, in method and spirit, to the student also, - in some measure even to the teacher. In botany, as in other studies, educational methods alter with the times. In the Linnean period the "best botanist was he who knew the most plants," however little of each; while a later and still dominant school has founded upon Cuvier a type-system which makes him know much, - but of few. Hence the student has come no longer to load his vasculum and memory in a single vacation, with all things from the cedar to the hyssop; but, seeing that cedar and hyssop have been selected as types by the highest authority, scrutinises these, and these only, for his term. Analysis is great, and the anatomist is its prophet; yet such Elementary Biology is but Necrology, its so-called "life-histories" being but histories of form. It is the misfortune of biology that Darwin was not a teacher. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.