20 FREAKS OF' PLANT LIFE. 



Wc may anticipate one or two objections which 

 may possibly be urged against this little volume^ 

 One of these may be that we have made very free 

 use of the many researches of Dr. Charles Darwin, 

 in certain phenomena of plant life, without adding 

 to them, in number or in illustration. To this we 

 plead guilty, with the excuse that by so doing wc 

 should contribute something towards the diffusion of 

 a knowledge, and, as we hope, of a more general ap- 

 preciation of the important additions he has made to 

 our knowledge of vegetable life. Some there are 

 who have been content to associate his name only 

 with a theory which they may not comprehend, but 

 do not fail to condemn. With that theory we are 

 not now concerned ; but there is another aspect in 

 which we desire that this accurate and indefatigable 

 observer should be known and remembered, outside 

 an exclusively scientific circle ; and that is, as a 

 collector of facts, the results of patient observations, 

 illustrative of the life history of plants and animals. 

 The volumes which he has written are unequalled as 

 a cyclopa;dia of facts ; and his bitterest foe has never 

 accused him of distorting, or misrepresenting facts, for 

 the benefit of any theory whatever. As a biological 

 historian, therefore, A\e commend him to our readers, 

 and, if wc have added so little to the subjects which 

 he has investigated, it is because he has done this so 

 completely that further amplification was unnecessary. 



