xii THE HUMAN SIDE OF PLANTS 
truths which must unquestionably meet the censure 
of the book-taught botanists of the old schools, but 
which will quite as unquestionably meet the entire 
approval of those naturalist-botanists of the more 
modern type, who accept no result without its cause 
and who study life for the love of it, with no pre- 
scribed limitations of fact or possibility. To many 
of these, the truths, here set forth for the first 
time, come as a verification of their own theories. 
In the preparation of this work I have repeatedly 
been questioned by interested friends, educated 
men and women, who wondered at many of the 
simplest statements of the characteristics and ac- 
tions of the different plants. “Is this true?” has 
been the surprised inquiry. “Do plants really set 
traps and catch fish?’ “Do they actually keep 
servants and employ standing armies?” “Isn’t that 
merely a figure?” 
It is amazing—the average child reaches man- 
hood or womanhood with a surprising lack of 
knowledge concerning the simplest natural objects 
about it. Educated in the great colleges of the 
country, having laboured through “courses” in bot- 
any, the student too often comes forth with a vague 
impression that “chlorophyll is green stuff,” 
“plants are fertilised by bees,” and with decided 
likes and dislikes for plants in the edible form of 
