INTRODUCTION. 
PART I. PLAN OF THE BOOK. 
This book is intended to help the ordinary nature-lover, who 
may perhaps have little or no special knowledge of botany, to 
find out the names of such trees and flowers as he meets with. 
If, knowing the name, he will turn for further information to one 
of the larger works mentioned below, so much the better, but the 
name must come first. With plants, as with human beings, the 
first step towards a friendship, with all its future possibilities of 
interest and delight, is to learn your friend’s name. No doubt 
even ignorant people get some sort of enjoyment out of nature, 
but it makes all the difference in the world to the pleasure of a 
country walk when, on every hedge-bank and in every ditch, we 
catch sight of familiar acquaintances, which we have learnt to 
greet by name, and to recognize as friends. 
The method of using the illustrated ‘“ Key” is explained in 
Part IV. Of course, several Keys exist already, such as the 
excellent one in BENTHAm’s “ British Flora,” but these are mostly 
couched in very technical language, and often presuppose more 
skill and experience than the beginner has at his command. In 
the present work technical terms are avoided as far as possible, 
and the Key is founded on plain and easily observed characters, 
and such as do not involve dissection. 
But the special feature of the book lies in the illustrations 
accompanying the text, which help to make its meaning clear at a 
glance. These figures are necessarily very small, and do not 
pretend to be complete pictures of the plants, but simply to 
illustrate the special characters used for the Key. By far the 
greater number of them were drawn direct from nature, for the 
particular purpose to which they are here applied. 
The method of the Key allows the groups of Trees and 
Shrubs, and the Aquatic Plants, to be treated by themselves, and 
thus makes it possible to identify most of these without depending 
on their flowers, which are so often difficult to examine, or absent. 
In short, the book aims especially at being practical, without, 
it is hoped, forfeiting all claim to be scientific. It tries to help 
the learner very much as a botanical friend might do, by pointing 
out, to the eye and the understanding at once, such characteristics 
as are found, by actual experience, to be easily recognized and 
remembered. ‘The first draft of the Key was written more than 
twenty years ago, and almost every part of it has been altered and 
amended to meet practical difficulties. 
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