28 PROSERPINA. 



and every sentence broken by apology. I should 

 have to write a dozen of letters before I could 

 print a line, and the line, at last, would be only 

 like a bit of any other botanical book — trustworthy 

 it might be, perhaps ; but certainly unreadable. 

 Whereas now, it will rather put things more forci- 

 bly in the reader's mind to have them retouched 

 and corrected as we go on ; and our natural and 

 honest mistakes will often be suggestive of things 

 we could not have discovered but by wandering. 



On these guarded conditions, then, I proceed to 

 study, with my reader, the first general laws of 

 vegetable form. 



