victim tos3es helpless : how is he to know what is offered? The Catalogue 

 says : " 6 inches, beautiful pink, full sun "; but this is only a revealing beaui 

 upon the surrouniling blackness of ignorance. IIow is the tempted to gct at a 

 more adéquate knowledge of his purchase, how is he to know that it even has a 

 right to the name it carries?... Only by the help of botany. Sooner or later he 

 begins to learn that authority alone can enlighlen him, authority alone reassure 

 him as to the identity of the plant he is l>uying, and give hiin indications of its 

 wishes and truo hal)it. So, bit by bit, the enthusiast ceases to thank Heaven he 

 is no botanist, and wishes, on the contrary, he were. 



Unfortunately, however, botanists are theniselves responsible in great 

 measure for the dread and hâte in which the simple-minded hold their art. For 

 our enthusiast in search of knowledge now goes to sonie Muséum shelf and 

 looks up his purchase, after long search, in some learned tome. He there reads 

 that it is glaberiusculous or glaucescent, with more or less pilose eglandular 

 appressed ciuereous pubescence, and leaves that are deeply runcinate, inipari- 

 pinnatipartite and lobulate, in crenulate-serrulate mucronate lobules. What is 

 he to make of this cruel jargon, the apt short-hand of the botanist, but worse 

 than Cuneiform to one who has not got the key ? He closes the book in a fury of 

 despair, and, though ignorance is by no means bliss. he décides that it would 

 be far more arduous folly to grow wise. 



Nor can his impatience, indeed, be whoUy blamed : even the 

 experienced student cannot realise at fîrst, in reading a plant's diagnosis, and 

 getting a mental picture of it thereby, that he is merely reading the resuit of a 

 thousand individuels, boiled down to make one constant généralisation. 

 Collation of innumerable spécimens, as a rule, must go to any trustworthy 

 diagnosis : as well hope to recognise one's own Beloved from a correct gênerai 

 description of the species wonian, as to glean an individual portrait of one's 

 own spécial plant from the scientific diagnosis of its species. Ail that the two 

 can hâve in common are certain unvarying peculiarities : within those limits 

 there is room for vast degrees of variation, and, though it is easy enough to 

 track down one's plant in books to its right name, it is not so easy, in cases of 

 doubt, to find in the spécifie description a clear, personal and legible pièce of 

 portraiture. 



Ail figures and diagnoses of species being thus gênerai rather than 

 individual, the seeker after knowledge is too often, even when he has found 

 his information, and made head or tail of it, put off by minute discrepancies 

 which seem to spoil the picture, and can only be known by further expérience, 

 to be mère variations, occurring well within the limits of the diagnosis. Indeed 

 not even botanists are always safe in the matter, not even after long 

 expérience : and many a " species " has been built up on the strength of 

 insignificant and inconstant variations. 



Therefore, on ail counts, 1 know that every gardener worth his 

 gardensoil will bail with eagerness this wonderful séries of notes and plates. 

 For hère, for the first time in his expérience, he will hâve for référence a 

 complète picture, under his eyes, of his plants in ail the ranges of their 

 variation, so that he will no longer be troubled by a leaf too entire or too 

 dentate for the spécifie description, l)ul will be reassured by aulhentic 



