VIU PREFACE 



drives the reader to observe aud think for himself, and 

 not through the eyes or worse still the words of others. 



No one has more respect for the Floras of the Empire 

 which created Floras than I have ; and no one could claim 

 to appreciate more fully the invaluable laboratory hand- 

 books on the Morpholog}^ and Histology of Plants, which 

 we first translated from the German and then improved 

 upon and made after our own methods, than I do. But 

 the scope of such works is restricted in each case to a 

 particular side of the subject, though to a side which 

 the real student of Botany should not neglect. 



Few would deny that the proper use of a Flora is in 

 the field ; but we all know that the best Floras are too 

 bulky for such work, and that the tendency is to collect in 

 the field and to use the Flora in the Herbarium, because 

 the few field-floras sufficiently compact to carry about 

 have too much of the character of note-books to be used 

 with effect by any but practised experts. On the other 

 hand, the Laboratory Handbook finds its proper scope 

 indoors, where alone the microscope and its adjuncts can 

 be employed, and such books are too much occupied with 

 general views of the enormous area of knowledge in which 

 they are the legitimate guides, to find time or space for 

 the details of plant-life in the open. 



Nor do the new departures attempted by the modern 

 studies of the biology of the living plant, whether con- 

 cerned with types of structure, with geographical distri- 

 bution, with the problems of CEcoIogy, or with other 

 physiological aspects of the organism, meet the require- 

 ments of the case. 



