LIBRARY OF- 



EDITOR'S PREFATORY NOTE. 



With this, the second and concluding volume of Ilie Natural History 

 of Plants, a brief statement and explanation of my position as editor is 

 imperative. As stated in my note to Volume I. the English text there 

 followed that of the original with considerable fidelity. In the second 

 volume I have less consistently followed this course. Throughout I have 

 not hesitated to add or substitute new matter, though no overt indication 

 of such departure from the original is given either by different type or 

 otherwise. It is needless to explain that these changes are only such as 

 the advance of botanical knowledge has rendered necessary since the original 

 was written, and that I have never desired to depart from the intention of 

 the author. To the specialist these modifications will be from time to time 

 apparent; the general reader will perhaps treat me with indulgence should 

 he think that in this matter my judgment has been at fault. Though 

 changes occur throughout the volume, I have preserved intact the main 

 conclusions of the author and the facts upon which they are based. To 

 have altered these in any way, even had I been so minded, would have 

 been inconsistent with the duties of an editor and translator. But in the 

 purely systematic portion of the work I have been restrained by no such 

 scruples. Professor Kerner himself regarded that portion of his work as 

 but tentative, and as it was difiicult to merely modify, the whole of this 

 portion has been written de novo, from the Thallophytes to the end of 

 the Gymnosperms (pp. 616-728), and in part the Monocotyledons. The 

 exigencies of the serial issue of The Natural History of Plants alone has 

 prevented the re-cast of the Dicotyledons, which stand with little modifi- 

 cation as in the original. For the portion dealing with the class Gamo- 

 pliycecB up to the end of the Conjugates (pp. 627-659), I am indebted to 

 my colleague, JVIr. A. G. Tansley of University College, who has devoted 



