PREFACE 
In the following chapters an attempt is made to deal, 
in a quite elementary way, with some of the wider 
aspects of plant life—to discuss questions which arise 
in the mind from a contemplation of the vegetation 
which clothes with a green mantle the surface of our 
own country. No essay is made to enumerate or 
define the plants to be met with in the different types 
of ground, or in the different geographical areas, 
which go to make up the British Isles: there are 
already plenty of excellent handbooks and local floras 
in which that aspect of native plant life is treated. 
The vegetation is taken rather as a whole, and its 
whence, and when, and how are considered with as 
little of technical phraseology as the subject allows. 
The influence on plants of their physical environment, 
and the intimate inter-relations of the vegetable 
kingdom with the other great manifestation of 
organic life, the animal kingdom, are briefly con- 
sidered, as is also the unique relation existing between 
the plant world and the human race, 
These chapters are intended to be used in conjunc- 
tion with simple observations in the field, such as any 
person of enquiring mind, unversed in science, may 
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