Excerpt from An Introduction to Botany Two hundred and ninety years have now elapsed since one of the earliest introductions to Botany upon record was published, in four pages folio, by Leonhart Fuchs, a learned physician of Tubingen. At that period Botany was nothing more than the art of' distinguishing one plant from another, and of' remembering the medical. Qualities, sometimes real, but more frequently imaginary, which experience, or error, or superstition, had ascribed to them. Little was known of Vegetable Physiology, nothing of Vege table Anatomy, and even the art of arranging species' systematically had still to be discovered; While scarcely a trace existed of those modern views which have raised the science from the mere business of the herb-gatherer to a station among the most intel lectual branches of natural philosophy. 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.