PREFACE 
ij Ctn. those who appreciate flowers they are as personal friends. 
| -k egg Valuing them as such it is pleasant to have their portraits, 
jrf®’ When the friends are with us we can compare the likeness 
Py Jy ■ with the original ; and when they are absent their 
“counterfeit presentment” forms a pleasant remembrance. 
The object in the water-colour drawings here reproduced has been to give 
faithful life-size portraits of a representative series of British wild plants. 
As far as possible the whole plant — root, leaf, flower, and fruit — has been 
included. As, in a few cases, more than one species has been drawn on 
one plate, 290 species, representing 248 genera, are given, and thirty 
analytical plates of dissections have been added to facilitate the minuter 
study of the plants. Of the hundred Families of British flowering plants, 
all but twelve are represented, those omitted, besides Grasses and Sedges, 
being mostly small groups of the less attractive water-plants. 
The arrangement is, in the main, that of Professor Engler, now very 
generally admitted to be the best linear grouping as yet achieved ; and 
the nomenclature is in accordance with the rules of the International 
Congresses of Vienna (1905) and Brussels (1910). The letterpress 
makes no pretence to he a complete British Flora. Such an undertaking 
would have to be six times the size of the present work. It attempts, 
however, to be scientifically accurate as far as it goes, while expressed 
in language as little technical as possible, so as to be readily intelligible 
to the non-botanical reader. All technicalities employed will be found 
to be explained either in the Introduction, in the body of the work, 
vii 
