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Excerpt from Minnesota Plant Life It has been well said that the main difficulties with the book on popular science are that, if popular, it will not be scientific, and, if scientific, it will not be popular. Yet, notwithstanding the truth thus epigrammatically expressed, I am venturing to put forth Minnesota Plant Life as a book certainly meriting the designation of popular, in so far as it is addressed to an audience not composed of botanists, and at the same time scientific, to the extent at least of choosing for its field one of the two great realms of living things the kingdom of plants. While to be out of fashion is to be out of the world, I have, nevertheless, resisted the impulse to designate this volume as a suitable text-book for the "secondary schools." On the contrary, such a use of it would be, in my opinion, distinctly unfortunate. It is not written in pedagogical vein, nor does it pre-suppose an acquaintance with teachers and laboratories. It would, however, be disingenuous to deny that the author has a definite educational purpose in view. Since this volume is to be distributed in every county and perhaps in every school district in Minnesota, it should, especially among the young, stimulate an interest in the study of plants. With a minimum of technicalities, sentimentalities, unavoidable inaccuracies or cumbersome details, it seeks to accomplish the following ends: 1. The plant world is presented as an assemblage of living things. 2. The different kinds of plants in Minnesota, from the lowest to the highest, are briefly reviewed in their natural order. 3. Some plant structures and behaviors are elementarily explained, as adaptations to surrounding nature. 4. Certain plant individuals and societies are brought before the reader as having life problems of their own, not as mere material for economic, anatomical or classificatory industry. In short, I have recognized that there are in Minnesota a number of intelligent men and women, boys and girls, who wish to know more about plants, and in the pages of this book I have sought to bring together what, from my own experience as a student of plants, and as an instructor of the young, seems to me a sufficiently adequate and compact presentation of the subject. Errors of judgment and of fact no doubt exist, as in many works of mere human construction. I hope that they will not prove harmful. In some matters, indeed, the point of view has shifted since certain chapters were in type. 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.
