62 



PARTICULAR DESIGN OF THE PRESENT WORK. 



When a fair knowledge of the structure of plants has been acquired, 

 and of the principles of classification, there are various branches of 

 Botany to which the intelligent mind may address itself with the 

 highest advantage. For instance, Vegetable Physiology, or the science 

 of the life of plants ; Botanical Geography, or the history of the distri- 

 bution of plants upon the surface of the earth ; Econo7nical Botany, or 

 the consideration of the uses of plants as food, and as sources of timber, 

 dyes, clothing materials, &c. ; Medical Botany, or the investigation of 

 their services as remedial agents in sickness. With the limited space 

 at command it is impossible to do more at present than touch in the 

 very briefest manner upon any of them, all being so comprehensive as 

 to call for special treatises. What we aim at now is to introduce 

 the lover of plants, by the easiest and pleasantest path, to an inti- 

 mate knowledge of everything growing wild in the fields and woods, 

 in the streams and on the hills, for seventeen or eighteen miles round 

 the good city of Manchester, and to give along with this such particulars 

 respecting the flowers and trees cultivated in gardens, shrubberies, and 

 green-houses, as are tolerably frequent, and likely to attract attention. 

 The "Flora" of a district, in the strict sense of the term, denotes 

 merely the ivild plants, and up to the present time, the books called 

 "Floras" profess to include no others. But to an admirer of nature, 

 a flower is a flower. Those who love plants are seldom found asking 

 whether a given flower be indigenous or exotic ; they wish to know 

 what they have got, and care little for its birth-place. Besides, in a 

 district that has been plentifully inhabited and diligently cultivated 

 for centuries, there are numbers of plants and trees in a semi-wild 

 condition, which the young botanist cannot possibly distinguish from 

 the aboriginal. To be useful under all circumstances, a " Flora " 

 should include both the introduced and the wild species, so long 

 as care is taken to say which they are. This is done in the 

 present volume. Every wild-flower is described at sufficient length for 



