Excerpt from Scientific Botany: Or, Botany as an Inductive Science

In producing this work of Professor Schleiden in an English dress, I feel that the reputation of the Author and the Work alike render any apology unnecessary, but I am conscious that I owe some explanation to the Public, both as to the manner of the translation and the delay in its appearance.

The second German edition of this Work, of which the present volume is a translation, was accompanied with a Methodological Introduction, intended as a development of those general principles of science, which are derived from a study of the observing mind, and the observed external nature. As the discussion of these general principles occupies a considerable space in the original, and it was deemed desirable not to increase the bulk of the present Work, this Introduction has been omitted. In its place I have, however, inserted a short summary of these observations, as they have been given by the Author himself in his "Grundriss der Botanik, " which work consists of the text of the present volume without the explanatory comments. This summary is given in the four first paragraphs of the present translation. In the original Introduction a considerable portion is occupied with the description of the microscope, and its application to scientific researches, as the observations of the Author seem to me to be judicious, and we have none of precisely the same kind in our own language, and especially as this book may fall into the hands of students who are not acquainted with the powers or the manner of using this instrument, I have thought it right to reproduce this portion of the Introduction.

With the exception of those parts of the Introduction referred to, and in not more than two or three instances, of matters in the notes that were not deemed relevant to the translation, nothing has been omitted in the present Work.

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