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INTRODUCTION
TO
BOTANY.
I. On the Use of Botany.
X HE use and pleasure of studying botany have been so"
long acknowledged, that it may seem perfectly superfluous
to discourse upon that subject ; but a slight sketch of the
use and pleasure accruing by this study is here given, in
order to convince those students, who have not yet reflected
upon the subject, that in bestowing their time, their labour,
or their money, upon the acquirement of this science, they
will not court an ungrateful mistress, but one who will
amply reward them for the pains they take in acquiring
her.
The greater part of those who study botany, are personsof
the medical profession, and of course the use of botany
in medicine is the first to be considered. It will therefore
be necessary, before any further progress is made, to advert
to the great difference between practising in large cities
and sea-port towns on the one hand, and in country villages
on the other. To the former merchants resort, and
the warehouses are filled with the choicest drugs of foreign
regions ; the poverty induced by the vicissitudes of commerce
requires alleviation from the charity ot the rich, hos-
pitals and dispensaries arise, and become medical schools.
The time of the practitioners being fully occupied by the
denseness of the population, they find it more convenient
to use the drugs in the warehouses, than to collect themselves
the indigenous productions of the surrounding country
; hence they regard with indifference whether the drug
be native or foreign, and this indifference, or rather preference
for foreign drugs, passes of course into the pharmacopoeias
published in those cities.
VOL. I, B