PREFACE. 



These little essays originally appeared as articles 

 in ' Longman's Magazine,' the ' Cornhill Magazine,' 

 ' Macmillan's Magazine,' the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' 

 and ' Belgravia,' and I have to thank the editors and 

 proprietors of those periodicals for kind permission 

 to reprint them here. They are now offered to the 

 public as a first instalment of a work which I hope 

 some day more full)- to carry out— a Functional 

 Companion to the British Flora. We know by this 

 time pretty well what our English wild flowers are 

 like : we want to know next why the}- arc just what 

 they are, and how they came to be so. 



G. A. 

 Lyme, Dorset : 

 7"ly 1883- 



