viii PREFATORY 
If we have borrowed their thunder, let them be 
assured that it is only with the hope that an echo of 
its reverberation may reach those at a distance, 
and those who, had they been brought nearer 
to its sound, might have been awed by its big 
intensity of volume, or mentally distracted by the 
polyglot and polysyllabic expressions these subjects 
demand. 
While paying due homage to all these illustrious 
extenders of a deep knowledge, and in no way wishing 
to minimize the deep ‘obligations that we owe them, 
we read that it has been truly said, that when a book 
is a large one, the majority of its readers become 
only acquainted with it by extracts and abstracts. 
Stupendous bulk is forbidding to those whose space 
of time allotted to them by reason of other duties in 
life is limited to the short-cut route to a port of 
lesser understanding. Piles of pages, and learned 
dissertation in a language only half understood, 
appal them, and they retire from the charge dis- 
couraged. They clamour for a more unperplexing 
catechism. Give them the abridgment process, 
wherefrom they can perchance see a little daylight 
peeping through the chinks of less thickened walls, 
and maybe they return to the charge, even to the 
time when they feel empowered to renew battle 
against the very forces that at first so overwhelm- 
ingly discomfited them. 
There are others we hope to help. We refer to those 
upon whom but limited chances of travel are bestowed, 
whose walks in life are far removed from recurring 
opportunity of visiting those scenes where object- 
lessons can be viewed at leisure. The fascinations of 
Kew are to them a far cry, or arare jaunt in the midst 
of a busy life. The glories of our best-stocked 
Pinetums are, again, to them often an unblessed 
vision altogether, or at most a breve gaudium upon a 
