Preface 
it can generally be expressed in perfectly plain and 
simple language. Doctrines that have to hide themselves 
in the decent obscurity of bad Latin and suspicious 
Greek often seem neither at all novel nor particularly 
interesting when translated into the simple Anglo-Saxon, 
But the process of translation is both dangerous and 
difficult. It is not only because the subjects often 
resemble the great text in Galatians in which twenty- 
nine distinct and different interpretations led to the 
most deplorable results, but it is really impossible to be 
quite impartial. 
That would produce a cold and inhuman treatment 
which would certainly interest nobody. I have often 
had to adopt one theory out of many clamouring com- 
petitors, It is in the reader’s interest that I have done 
so, not because I was unaware of the danger of errors 
and omissions. 
I must apologise also to many authors for much that 
should and would have been inserted had I only known 
of its existence in time. An extraordinary number of 
books of the first importance appeared in the interval 
between printing and publication. The English edition 
of Warming’s “ Ecology” and Seward’s “ Darwin and 
Modern Thought” were not seen by me until it was too 
late to make any alteration. 
In spite of what is euphoniously called the “ litera- 
ture” of botany, the labourers in the great World’s 
Garden are still few and widely scattered. There is 
still opportunity for every kind of helper, and none can 
be safe in neglecting the most interesting of all the 
sciences, 
G. F, SCOTT ELLIOT. 
June 23rd, 1909. 
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