INTRODUCTION. I I 



bitterly sorry I am, now, that the work was inter- 

 rupted. For I drew, then, very delicately ; and 

 should have made a pretty book if I could have 

 got peace. Even yet, I can manage my point a 

 little, and would far rather be making outlines of 

 flowers than writing ; and I meant to have drawn 

 every English and Scottish wild flower, like this 

 cluster of bog heather opposite,* — back, and profile, 

 and front. But ' Blackwood's Magazine,' with its 

 insults to Turner, dragged me into controversy ; and 

 I have not had, properly speaking, a day's peace 

 since ; so that in 1868 my botanical studies were 

 advanced only as far as the reader will see in next 

 chapter; and now, in 1874, must end altogether, I 

 suppose, heavier thoughts and work coming fast on 

 me. So that, finding among my note-books, two or 

 three, full of broken materials for the proposed work 

 on flowers ; and, thinking they may be useful even 

 as fragments, I am going to publish them in their 

 present state, — only let the reader note that while 

 my other books endeavour, and claim, so far as they 

 reach, to give trustworthy knowledge of their sub- 

 jects, this one only shows how such knowledge may 



* Admirably engraved by Mr. Burgess, from my pen drawing, 

 now at Oxford. By comparing it with the plate of the same flower 

 in Sowerby's work, the student will at once see the difference between 

 attentive drawing, which gives the cadence and relation of masses in a 

 group, and the mere copying of each flower in an unconsidered huddle. 



