A laboratory course in plant physiology [antikvár]

PREFACE.This book has a threefold purpose. First, it aims to lead students through a good laboratory course in Plant Physiology. Second, it seeks to provide a handbook of information upon all phases of Plant Physiology having any educational interest. Third, I venture to hope that it may find service as a guide to self-education by ambitious teachers or students, who, unable to obtain regular instruction, yet wish to advance themselves in this attractive and important subject. To meet these ends I have tried to bring together the best of that which is already known in its field, and to add thereto some materials derived from new studies. The book is not a compendium of physiological knowledge, nor yet, except incidentally, a handbook of investigation; but it is a guide to the acquisition of a physiological education. It is designed as a contribution to educational economy, and as such I wish it to be judged.If the book is found to have any special merit in its particular field, this will no doubt consist in its practicability, for, with but few and mostly obvious exceptions, everything in it has been tested repeatedly by my students and myself. In this, as in some other respects, however, the work is uneven, and some parts have been worked out far more carefully than others. The faults I hope in the future to correct and the deficiencies to supply. Nobody can be more conscious than I of its imperfections, and of how much remains to be done to put our physiological education upon a satisfactory basis. But at least we may feel assured that we are on the right road, and have made a goodly start.