Preface ix 



The opening pages touch briefly upon the subject of 

 pollenization and propagation of plants. This is a 

 study in itself and an exceedingly interesting one. 

 There is still opportunity for -a great deal of valuable 

 research in this line of study; in fact, it is in the hope 

 of awakening interest in this line that the many brief 

 allusions in the text, to the methods of fertilization 

 are made. The interdependence existing between the 

 plant, the insect and the animal world is amazing. 

 One will be astonished at the truths he will discover 

 by closely watching the living plants and their visi- 

 tors. 



The body of the book contains plants, chiefly herbs, 

 found east of the Rocky Mountains, that are conspicu- 

 ous in flower. These are arranged in their natural 

 and most approved order. Many attempts have been 

 made to group flowers according to their colors, but 

 there are so many colors and flowers of the same spe- 

 cies vary so greatly that all such attempts have been 

 chiefly failures as far as assisting easy identification 

 is concerned. 



About 90 per cen-t of the paintings, from which the 

 colored illustrations were made, were sketched and 

 colored directly from freshly collected flowers gath- 

 ered from Maine to Virginia. I have been very great- 

 ly assisted in the work by many friends, and am es- 

 pecially indebted to Mrs. Ella L. Horr, Custodian at 

 the Worcester Natural History Museum, and to Mr. 

 Herbert D. Braman, Curator in the Dept. of Mineral- 

 ogy, in the same Institution; very many of the flow- 

 ers figured herein, especially some of the rarer varie- 

 ties, were collected and kindly loaned by them. 



The technical descriptions and ranges are based 



