About The Book : The following brief sketch of the history of botany makes no claim to originality save in the mode of presentation of the subject-matter. It comprises the substance of a course of lectures given to students of the University of Liverpool during their third year of residence, and has for its object the discussion of the more important features in the advance of botanical knowledge from the earliest times down to, approximately, the present day. The ordinary university student, in the course of an already overcrowded curriculum, has only the minimum of time to devote to the study of the history of the science, and not always the knowledge or experience requisite to form a proper estimate of the relative values of the results achieved by the numberless investigators whose names appear on the pages of the larger text-books, still less to picture for himself in correct perspective, the evolution of the science as a whole.