PREFACE. 



being able to answer the appeals which gar- 

 deners often made to me in doubtful cases, 

 (supposing that Mr. Loudon's wife must know 

 everything about plants,) I determined to learn 

 Botany if possible ; and as my old repugnance 

 remained to the Linnean system, I resolved to 

 study the Natural one. Accordingly I began ; 

 but when I heard that plants were divided into 

 the two great classes, the Vasculares and the 

 Cellulares, and again into the Dicotyledons or 

 Exogens, the Monocotyledons or Endogens, 

 and the Acotyledons or Acrogens, and that the 

 Dicotyledons were redivided into the Dichla- 

 mydese and Monochlamydese, and again into 

 three sub-classes, Thalamiflorse, Calyciflorse, 

 and Corolliflorae, I was in despair, for I thought 

 it quite impossible that I ever could remember 

 all the hard names that seemed to stand on the 

 very threshold of the science, as if to forbid the 

 entrance of any but the initiated. 



Some time afterwards, as I was walking 

 through the gardens of the Horticultural So- 

 ciety at Chiswick, my attention was attracted 

 by a mass of the beautiful crimson flowers of 



