Richard Salisbury

“ Botany, like all other sciences, has lately made a rapid progress in improvement, and in no branch so conspicuously as that which relates to the affinities of genera; more might be said on this head, if it were not already anticipated in a short but most energetic paragraph of the Edinburgh Review. With regard to the Plants themselves, such only as are new, uncommonly beautiful, or incompletely figured by others, will be selected ”

“ The present taste for Botany, so general among all ranks, and the great encouragement given to works of merit in that fascinating science, first emboldened the Publisher of the present undertaking to solicit assistance from several distinguished Collectors of Plants in the vicinity of the Metropolis. ”

“ In all similar publications which have hitherto appeared, not even excepting the most respectable, a considerable portion of each page has been filled with useless repetitions of the classes, orders and generic characters of the sexual system. No one who pretends to the least knowledge of the science is without the Genera Plantarum of Linne, nor any one who is solicitous to gain deeper information, without that of Jussieu. ”