INTRODUCTION. 
to other and more pre-eminent beauties in the same style; where 
uglinesses are briefly selected for commination, it will be because, 
above other uglinesses, they abound in catalogues, and have the 
unmerited praise of the professional. In other words, if a recog- 
nised species be not quoted in these pages, I may safely promise 
the prospective purchaser that he will be doing most prudently 
if he keeps his purse-strings tight against it, unless it come 
before him at last with a sufficient letter of credit, in the form of 
a really trustworthy description. 
The rigid eclecticism, however, into which this book has been 
forced, for fear of becoming yet vaster than it is, has endeavoured 
to follow certain lines of purpose, with more or less consistency, 
and with due allowance made for the personal predilections that 
in such a choice are bound to have their play. The field I have 
had to cover embraces not only the rock-garden, but its adjuncts, 
the wild garden and the bog, to say nothing of the fact that certain 
shrubs are especially apt for the rockwork, and cannot wholly 
be passed over. At the same time, if such outliers of the mountains 
were here to be dealt with in detail as full as the true children of 
the hills, not two volumes would be required, but ten. Accord- 
ingly I have been much put to it to deal compendiously and 
justly, yet not with excessive favouritism, by the many vague 
families that hover on the edge of the herbaceous border or the 
rubbish heap. Nor have I seen a need to deal exhaustively with 
yet more important races, when these have already been fully 
and accurately treated in cheap and easily accessible handbooks, 
consecrated by their own special experts to their own special 
claims. Accordingly, I have skated light-foot over the ocean of 
Iris and Lily, recommending Mr. Dykes and Mr. Groves for fully 
qualified pilots. In dimmer families of larger plants, I have run 
quickly through such races as Senecio and Spiraea, to keep the 
reader enlightened but not detained, while on members better 
qualified for the rock-garden by their size, I have paused for an 
ampler moment of expatiation. But it is on this debatable 
border-land that the question of selection has been most difficult, 
and the result may perhaps be found most doubtful. For, while cul- 
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