PREFATORY NOTICE. 
THE publication of a translation of Hermann Miiller’s Die 
Befruchtung der Blumen, &c., will without doubt be a great 
service to every English botanist or entomologist who is interested 
in general biological problems. The book contains an enormous 
mass of original observations on the fertilisation of flowers, and 
on the part which insects play in the work, given with much 
clearness and illustrated by many excellent woodcuts. It includes 
references to everything which has been written on the subject; 
and in this respect the English edition will greatly exceed in 
value even the original German edition of 1873, as Miiller has 
completed the references up to the present time. No one else could 
have done the latter work so well, as he has kept a full account 
of all additions to our knowledge on this subject. Any young 
observer who, after reading the whole or part of the present work, 
will look, for instance, at the flower of a Salvia, or of some 
Papilionaceous or Fumariaceous plant, or at one of our common 
Orchids, will be delighted at the perfection of the adaptations 
by which insects are forced, unconsciously on their part, to carry 
pollen from the stamens of one plant to the stigma of another. 
Design in nature has for a long time deeply interested many men, 
and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat 
different point of view to what was formerly the case, it is not 
thus rendered the less interesting. 
