Excerpt from Plants and Their Uses, an Introduction to Botany
The main purpose of the book is to show some of the educational possibilities offered by plants of every day use, and at the same time to guide beginners to such general ideas about plants as should form part of a liberal education.
There are a number of plants that every one ought to know because of their intimate connection with human welfare. These plants represent all parts of the vegetable kingdom, they are the very ones about which most persons have the greatest desire to learn, and they are mainly the ones which were first studied by mankind. Help the beginner, therefore, to learn at the outset as much about these economic plants as he is ready for; then help him to classify them scientifically, and he will be prepared to appreciate that wider view of the life of plants which inspires botany today. On this plan I have tried to write such a book as I believe would have been most useful to me when I was a beginner.
Botany taught by the historical method, as this procedure may be called, not only appeals from the start to the strongest practical incentives, but profits by the students knowledge in many other departments, which knowledge it often enriches. Thus pursued botany also offers an exceptionally fine opportunity for cultivating scientific habits of mind and methods of work. These are sure to economize energy in every intellectual undertaking. The scientific attitude and scientific ways of proceeding control modern progress, and in no better way can one catch the spirit of these than by the scientific study of plants.
So closely similar are the needs of all who wish to make a good beginning that it becomes possible for a book like the present to serve many diverse classes of students.
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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. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Plants and Their Uses, an Introduction to Botany (Classic Reprint) (Frederick Leroy Sargent)