Introductory. 



deciphered. In the following pages, I have taken 

 some half-dozen of familiar English weeds or flowers, 

 and tried thus to make them yield up the secret of 

 their own origin. Each of them is ultimately de- 

 scended from the common central ancestor of the 

 entire flowering group of plants ; and each of them has 

 acquired every new diversity of structure or appear- 

 ance for some definite and useful purpose. As a rule, 

 traces of all the various stages through which every 

 species has passed are still visibly imprinted upon 

 the very face of the existing forms : and one only re- 

 quires a little care and ingenuity, a little use of com- 

 parison and analogy, to unravel by their own aid the 

 story of their own remoter pedigree. This is the 

 method which I have here followed in the papers 

 that deal with the various modifications of the daisy, 

 of the grasses, of the lilies, of the strawberry, and of 

 the whole rose family. 



Again, not only has each English plant a general 

 history as a species, but it has also a separate history 

 as a member of the British flora. Besides.the question 

 how any particular flower or fruit came to exist at all, 

 we have to account for the question how it came to 

 exist here and now in this, that, or the other part .of 

 the British Islands. For, of course, all plants are not 

 to be found in all parts of the world alike, and their 



