PREFACE 



The object of the present volume is to fill a gap which 

 appears to the authors to exist in the literature of ele- 

 mentary botany, and, however imperfectly this object 

 has been attained, it is their hope that a sufficiently clear 

 indication has been given to teachers and students alike 

 of the lines upon which the interaction between the vital 

 element on the one hand and the forces of Nature on the 

 other may be read into the hard facts of morphology, 

 and thus the " dry bones " of descriptive botany be 

 "clothed with living flesh." The association of form 

 with function, of fact with environment, and of effect 

 with cause, provides undeniably the most efficient method 

 of securing a real knowledge of any branch of Natural 

 History, the study of which by this means becomes one 

 of the highest educational value. 



Botany is the most accessible of the Natural Sciences. 

 Flowers are everywhere. They appeal to the wonder of 

 the child, and for older folk their study and cultivation 

 form an unrivalled hobby. To many, however, botany 

 appears a science of hard names and stiU harder facts — 

 at least at the outset. The knowledge derived from 

 the text-book is too often overburdened with detail and 

 is therefore soon forgotten. Too much of it is concerned 

 with the bodies, and too Httle with the lives, of the 

 plants so minutely described. This should not be. 

 There is romance and tragedy in the struggle of vegetable 

 forms and races as among animal. Plants as well as 

 animals constitute an aggregate of living things, the 

 component races of which compete for mastery one 

 against the other; plants no less than animals have a- 

 history past 'and present — a history of strife with the 

 elements, of invasions, of colonization, of the formation 

 of communities and associations. In the course of time 

 they change : some perish ; others give origin to new forms 

 destined one day to displace them and, through their 



