PREFACE. 



THE acknowledged and daily-felt want of a work, on 

 the plan of the following, of a truly practical descrip- 

 tion, has induced the Author to prepare this outline, 

 hoping it may prove of some utility to the Student 

 while pursuing his researches in the fields. The diffi- 

 culties to be overcome in a work of this kind are nume- 

 rous. To exhibit the actual Flora of the country thirty 

 miles round London, and to give the precise locality of 

 every individual plant would be next to impossible ; the 

 only means by which an approximation to this could be 

 effected, would be, by the noble-minded and generous 

 Botanist sending the results of his own excursions to 

 those who have the power of making them public pro- 

 perty. It is with that view that the Author has presented 

 the results of his own labours, combined with those of 



