PBEFACE. VU 



Now you observe, in this instructive page, that you have in the first place eight 

 names given you for one flower ; and that, among these eight names, you are not 

 even at liberty to make your choice, because the united authority of Haller and 

 Miller may be considered as an accurate balance to the single authority of Linnseus ; 

 and you ought therefore for the present to remain, yourself, balanced between the 

 sides. You may be farther embarrassed by finding that the Anthericum of Savoy is 

 only described as growing in Switzerland. And farther still, by finding that Mr. 

 Miller describes two varieties of it, which differ only in size, while you are left to 

 conjecture whether the one here figured is the larger or smaller, and how great the 

 diff"erence is. 



Farther, if you wish to know anything of the habits of tlie plant, as well as its 

 eight names, you are informed that it grows both at the bottoms of the mountains and 

 the tops ; and that, with us, it flowers in May and June, — but you are not told when 

 in its native country. 



The four lines of the last clause but one may indeed be useful to gardeners ; but 

 — although I know my good father and mother did the best they could for me in 

 buying this beautiful book ; and though the admirable plates of it did their work and 

 taught me much — I cannot wonder that neither my infantine nor boyish mind was 

 irresistibly attracted by the text, of which this page is one of the most favourable speci- 

 mens ; nor, in consequence, that my botanical studies were — when I had attained the 

 age of fifty — no farther advanced than the reader will find them in the opening chapter 

 of this book. 



Which said book was therefore undertaken to put, if it might be, some elements 

 of the science of botany into a form more tenable by ordinary human and childish 

 faculties ; or — for I can scarcely say I have yet any tenure of it myself — to make the 

 paths of approach to it more pleasant. In fact, I only know of it the pleasant 

 distant effects which it bears to simple eyes ; and some pretty mists and mysteries, 

 which I invite my young readers to pierce, as they may, for themselves, — my power 

 of guiding them being only for a little way. 



Pretty mysteries, I say, as opposed to the vulgar and ugly mysteries of the so-called 

 science of botany, — exemplified sufficiently in this chosen page. Respecting which, please 

 observe farther : Nobody — I can say this very boldly — loves Latin more dearly than 

 I ; but, precisely because I do love it (as well as for other reasons), I have always 

 insisted that books, whether scientific or not, ought to be written either in Latin or 

 English, and not in a doggish mixture of the refuse of both." 



It may not be out of place to observe that our leading nurserymen 

 might, if so disposed, render valuable assistance to the work of dissemi- 

 nating a knowledge of the English names of plants, if, in their catalogues, 

 they made it a practice to give the vernacular names along with the bota- 

 nical ones. This is very largely done by American nurserymen, and,, 

 although it may seem invidious to single out any one establishment, it 

 may be useful to mention the catalogue of hardy perennial plants issued 

 by Messrs. "Woolson & Co., Passaic, New Jersey, as suggestive in this 

 respect. 



With regard to the present volume, it has been carefully compiled 

 from all available sources of information in our standard botanical works, 

 British and Colonial Floras, the leading horticultural journals, and the 

 catalogues of British, American, and Australian nurserymen. Being 

 simply a dictionary of names (of which it contains over 15,000), it formed. 



