PREFACE 

 By G. S. Boulger, F.L.S.. F.G.S. 



Professor of Botany and Geology in the City of London College. 



It cannot be too often insisted upon that knowledge, 

 and not ignorance, is the true parent of reverential 

 wonder. Our appreciation of the beauty of a flower is 

 heightened, and not lessened, by the knowledge that 

 each curve in its outline and each spot of colour on its 

 petal has a definite utility in the plant-economy. Our 

 admiration of a landscape is intensified, and not 

 diminished by the thought that hill and dale owe their 

 contour to the excavating power of rain and rivers 

 operating through ages of time, and that the vegeta- 

 tion which clothes them has definite relations to the 

 composition of the soil and to the character of the 

 climate. 



It has, therefore, been wisely recognised by all our 

 modern authorities on the subject of education, that 

 the study of some of the sciences should occupy an 

 early and an important place in our school curriculum. 

 It may be that those universal favourites, the flowers, 

 which can anywhere be readily obtained, are to be the 

 subject of study; or the innate love of experiment is 

 to be fostered and directed in the chemical laboratory; 

 or, perhaps better still, the physical features of the 

 world around us, of sky and sea, of mountain and 

 river, of crystal and pebble, are to be presented, not 



