Excerpt from Alphabet of Botany, for the Use of Beginners If it may be considered of some little moment, in this world of care, to multiply the sources of human enjoyment the study of Botany, independently of any other circumstance, ought to stand high in the estimation of those who have more leisure than they know well how to get rid of. So long as every plant that intrudes itself unbidden into the garden or the corn field is stigmatised as a weed, and every flower that may blow by the way side, though it beautify the hedge bank or the green lane, or though, in the fine poetical language of Scripture, it cause "the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose" - so long, I say, as such are passed unheeded by those who walk abroad in the fields, they might almost as well be previously blindfolded, since they must overlook many thousand beauties, which the Botanist everywhere discovers, and must lose more than half the pleasure they might otherwise enjoy. I was about fifteen when I took my first botanical ramble with Withering's British Plants under my arm, and the fresh enthusiasm of youth to spur me onward in the path of knowledge. The day, I recollect, was one of the loveliest in what Coleridge so expressively calls "the leafy month of June;" and I soon found a spot on the banks of the Ayr, where there were more flowers than it was possible for a mere beginner to master, even with a long summer's day at his command. 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.