PLAN OF THE WORK, 



IF it may be considered of some little moment, in 

 this world of care, to multiply the sources of human 

 enjoyment, the study of Botany, independently of 

 any "other circumstance, ought to stand high in the 

 estimation of those who have more leisure than they 

 know well how to get rid of. So long as every plant 

 that intrudes itself unbidden into the garden or the 

 corn field is stigmatised as a weed, and every flower 

 that may blow by the way side, though it beautify the 

 hedge bank or the green lane, or though, in the fine 

 poetical language of Scripture, it cause "the wilder- 

 ness and the solitary place to be glad, and the desert 

 to rejoice and blossom as the rose" so long, I say, as 

 such are passed unheeded by those who walk abroad 

 in the fields, they might almost as well be previously 

 blindfolded, since they must overlook many thousand 

 beauties, which the Botanist everywhere discovers, 

 and must lose more than half the pleasure they might 

 otherwise enjoy. 



I was about fifteen when I took my first botanical 

 ramble with Withering's British Plants under my 

 arm, and the fresh enthusiasm of youth to spur me 

 onward in the path of knowledge. The day, I recol- 

 lect, was one of the loveliest in what Coleridge so 

 expressively calls " the leafy month of June ; " and I 

 soon found a spot on the banks of the Ayr, where there 

 were more flowers than it was possible for a mere 

 beginner to master, even with a long summer's day at 

 his command. I was delighted, however, to make out, 



