PREFAGH. 
’ Rightly to understand what work is done by living 
plants, and how it is effected, not only requires a student 
to be a botanist in the ordinary sense of the word, but 
necessitates that he should also have a comprehensive 
knowledge of physics and of chemistry. 
In few individuals can such an extensive knowledge 
now-a-days be expected. The practical cultivator espe- 
cially, harrassed by the daily cares of his occupation, is 
not able to master the endless details of these sciences ; 
and yet experience shows the increasing necessity for 
furnishing him with new tools and new weapons to 
enable him to utilize the resources of Nature, and to 
contend against adverse circumstances. Such tools, such 
weapons are furnished by the armory of science. It is 
the object of this Handbook to point out the nature of 
these resources, and suggest the methods of utilizing 
them. Something will be gained if only a right appre- 
ciation of what cannot be done is obtained, as thereby 
labor on a sterile soil will be avoided, to be applied with 
more reasonable hope of success elsewhere. 
_In the following pages an attempt has, therefore, been 
made to supply a sketch, necessarily in faintest outline, 
of the physiology or life-history of plants; of the way in 
which they are affected by the circumstances under which 
they exist, and of the manner in which they in their turn 
react upon other living beings and upon natural forces. 
Of necessity, there has been a little overlapping in the 
case of some of the subjects treated of in the companion 
volume, ‘‘ The Chemistry of the Farm,” by Mr. Waring- 
ton; but as the matters are looked at from a different 
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