PREFACE 



THIS little volume is intended for the use of those who y 

 possessing little or no botanical knowledge, desire to know 

 the names of our British wild flowers. 



It is planned to enable the earnest novice or the young 

 enthusiast to make pleasant practical progress in the 

 pursuit of Nature-knowledge. While, necessarily, super- 

 ficial attraction cannot be its chief feature, it endeavours 

 to avoid equally the dry-as-dust technicalism on the 

 one hand and the scrappy, ephemeral, almost futile 

 method on the other. 



It is hoped that it will supply at least a portion of 

 that solid basis of facts upon which only can principles 

 be either formulated, tested, or understood. 



So much has the study of Nature been neglected, and 

 even discouraged, in the past, that the wish expressed by 

 Carlyle voices the sentiments of thousands, who feel, as 

 he did, that Man has many interests in common with 

 the rest of Nature, is indeed constantly appealed to by 

 her, and that through the study of Nature and her works 

 that profound longing for knowledge inherent in the 

 human mind, can be best met and satisfied. 



I have very vivid recollections of the time, many years 

 ago, when as a beginner in Field Botany, desirous of a 

 closer acquaintance with the feast of Nature, I went, 

 together with an able and highly- valued friend, on an 

 excursion to a delightfully secluded botanist's hunting- 

 ground in North Derbyshire. The day was almost a 

 perfect one, and the joy of hunting for various kinds of 

 plants, many of which we had never met before, seemed 

 only to be marred by the difficulties encountered and the 

 time spent in naming the treasures discovered. 



Whilst my companion, plant in one hand and " Flora " 

 in the other^ patiently proceeded^ with the help of a 



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