Excerpt from Elements of Plant Biology The problem, then, is to provide, under these conditions, a course of teaching which shall be as interesting as possible and shall serve to introduce the student to the fundamental facts and principles of biology, both as part of his training for life and more particularly as an introduction to the study of medicine, which, as has often been said, is really a specialised branch of applied biology. The time is past when we could hope to give the budding medical student a thorough training in elementary botany and zoology, and with the ever increasing complexity of the medical curriculum proper there is constant pressure to shorten and simplify the preparatory parts. It seems to me that biologists should yield to this pressure to a reasonable extent, and frankly ask themselves how far the things that have been traditionally taught really serve as the best introduction to biology for medical students under existing conditions. 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.