2 THE NATURE-STUDY OF PLANTS 
presented sooner or later to all those who take up the 
study of Nature for their recreation or their life-work. 
He cannot learn her ways unless he be acquainted, 
not only with facts, but also with their meaning in 
relation to others, with which the connection is often 
a great deal more real than apparent. 
We do not, however, when speaking of Nature- 
study, use the term in its widest and universal sense, 
but we confine its meaning more especially to the 
study of the living animals and plants of the world, 
to the animate as opposed to the inanimate creation : 
although it should not be forgotten that the latter is 
a part of Nature which must by no means be neglected, 
for it is not possible to understand fully the life of 
any organism, whether animal or vegetable, without 
knowing a little about the physical conditions under 
which it lives and to which it must make an adequate 
response or else die. 
Nature-study, therefore, is capable of demanding 
a great deal from those of its devotees who are 
ambitious, and very much more than can be expected 
reasonably from any one who turns to it merely as a 
recreation and a hobby. 
It is for the hobby-rider that I write with a view 
to pointing the way to small beginnings which can be 
extended, if so desired, almost indefinitely, but I do 
not aim at exhausting even the comparatively small 
number of points with which I deal. 
There are many more ways than one in which 
Nature can be studied. Students confined themselves, 
in my early days, almost exclusively to collecting 
specimens, giving them names, and then putting them 
away in a cabinet, without perhaps ever looking at 
them or referring to them again. Now I have not 
