2 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



Abstract knowledge, apart from human interests, or out- 

 lying interests of some kind, is to most a dull, dry thing ; 

 it will therefore be no departure from the plan of these 

 sketches, but rather a part of it, to step aside occasionally, 

 in our botanical ramble over the world, to subjects which, 

 in themselves, are not strictly connected with either botany 

 or geography, but to which the two together may sometimes 

 lead us. The object is chiefly, so far as it can be done in 

 such an outline as this, to bring together, within a small 

 compass, facts which have been gathered from various and 

 authentic sources, so as to convey some idea of the various 

 aspects of Nature in those different and distant regions of 

 the earth where dwell our unknown brothers and sisters in 

 the great human family; and to help those who stay at 

 home, to create for themselves a kind of mental picture of 

 the sights which daily meet the eyes of those absent friends 

 who have made a home for themselves in foreign lands. 



The science of Botanical Geography, though it has made 

 rapid strides of late, is yet in a very incomplete state. In 

 the work which has chiefly been taken as a guide in arrang- 

 ing these pages,"* the repeated and candid avowal of this fact 

 is perhaps one of the first things that strikes the reader > 



* Meyen's Botanical Geography (Miss Johnstone's Translation). 



