i PREFACE. 



The reader may, if he so chooses, consider both 



the title of this Book, and much of its contents, as 



I a Parable. But I have taken up the Parable with 



] a view of bringing the Lives of Plants more nearly 



; home to us. Botany is no longer a matter of 



I counting stamens and pistils, and expressing the 



3 classified result in a Greek -derived nomenclature ; 



V it no longer consists in merely collecting as many 



kinds of plants as possible, whose dried and 



shrivelled remains are too often only the caricatures 



of their once living beauty. It is now a science of 



I Living Things^ and not of mechanical automata, and 



. I have endeavoured to give my readers a glance 



at the laws of their lives. Therefore, whilst not 



beseeching criticism (seeing I have not written so 



[ much for learned botanists as for those who take 



an intelligent interest in plants), I do not deprecate 



