INTRODUCTION. vii 



are few to whom the dandelion or daisy are unknown, 

 we should surmise though it is sad to think that in 

 the midst of our crowded cities grow up thousands to 

 whom the commonest detail of country life is a sealed 

 book, and even outside a horizon so circumscribed dwell 

 other thousands who neither know nor care but there 

 must be few indeed who have not found, sooner or later, 

 as they gathered rich floral spoil in a ramble through 

 the woods, across the breezy moorland, and by the 

 banks of some placid stream, the difficulty of assigning 

 names to all their treasures. The power of appreciating 

 the beauty and interest of the wayside weed, the hedge- 

 row garland, is much ; but the beauty is no less, and 

 the interest the more, if we can in addition recognise 

 our plant as an old friend, can welcome it by name, can 

 have a clue whereby we may search out in the writings 

 of authorities its life history : a means of identifica- 

 tion which we can in all confidence employ in detailing 

 our good fortune to those who will sympathise with us 

 in our discovery. 



Many beginners are afraid of scientific terms, but 

 science after all only means knowledge, and no one, 

 surely, need be afraid of that, while the word botany is 

 but derived from the Greek word for a plant. If there 

 are any who, alarmed in taking up the present book that 

 they are going to be inveigled unawares into the study of 

 the science of botany, and prefer to consider that they are 

 being induced to learn something of the plants around 



