vi PREFACE 



They have received kindly recognition far beyond their 

 own merits or the writer's expectation, and have brought 

 him into correspondence with many persons in near and 

 distant parts of the earth. Some have taken the kindly 

 pains to lay finger on blunders, and here is an oppor- 

 tunity for correcting such as come to mind. 



1st Series, p. 20. The iris of the scaup is not white 

 but yellow. I wrote from distant memory of the only 

 one I ever cared to shoot. 



1st Series, p. 79. Canon Ellacombe tells me that he 

 believes it was Dillenius, not Linnaeus, who was so 

 profoundly affected by the prospect of English gorse in 

 bloom, but he cannot remember his authority. 



2nd Series, p. 165. The holly is described as disecious, 

 i.e. bearing flowers of different sexes on separate trees. 

 This is not correct. Bentham, curd Hooker, says, 

 'Flowers white in dense clusters in the axils of the 

 leaves, often unisexual.' The truth appears to be that 

 the perfect flowers are five-cleft and hermaphrodite ; but 

 many flowers, often all those on one tree, are four-cleft 

 and develop only male organs. This accounts for the 

 impossibility of distinguishing among young hollies those 

 which will bear berries and which will not, for the plants 

 do not flower till they are several years old. 



To the list of rabbit-proof plants at the end of the 

 2nd Series should be added several species of privet, 

 monbretia, funkia, and the wood forget-me-not (Myosotis 

 sylvatica), with the usual caveat that nearly everything 

 requires protection when first planted where rabbits are 



