ARNOLDUS SYEN

TO THE CANDID

READER

A LOVER OF BOTANY

I wish to warn you, kind reader, with just a few words at the very threshold, what has been accomplished by me in this work. When, in the past year, it happened that I browsed through it, the laudable plan of the authors, brought to the goal with no unequal success, soon pleased me. For besides the most splendid figures, and those so skillfully delineated that I might dare to assert that an egg is scarcely more like another—judging from the dried plants, most of which I keep in my possession—the diffuse description presents a most accurate Anatomy of the Plants, which exhibits not only their individual parts, but also the minutiae of the parts. For to decorate this work, most of the Kings of the Malabar tract contributed their assistance, and ordered the inner and most remote recesses of the Kingdom to be explored under the auspices of their nobles and physicians. Yet it seemed that this work was lacking, along with the others