x Preface 



Miss Janet Robertson, for the cover, the design for which 

 is based upon a wood-cut in the Ortus Sanitatis of 1491. 



A book of this kind, in the preparation of which many 

 previous works have been laid under contribution, is doubt- 

 less open to a certain criticism which William Turner, "the 

 Father of British Botany," anticipated in the case of his 

 own writings. I think I cannot do better than proffer my 

 excuse in the very words of this sixteenth-century herbalist : 



"For some of them will saye, seynge that I graunte 

 that I have gathered this booke of so manye writers, that 

 I offer unto you an heape of other mennis laboures, and 

 nothinge of myne owne,...To whom I aunswere, that if the 

 honye that the bees gather out of so manye floure of herbes, 

 shrubbes, and trees, that are growing in other mennis 

 medowes, feldes and closes : maye justelye be called the 

 bees honye:... So maye I call it that I have learned and 

 gathered of manye good autoures...my booke." 



AGNES ARBER. 



Balfour Laboratory, Cambridge, 

 26th July, 191 2. 



