PREFACE. 
attractive field, may be regarded as a supplement to the now well-known book, 
the title of which is cited at the beginning of this prefatory note. If my expec- 
tations are fulfilled, it will add some very interesting chapters to the popular 
history of Plant-life. 
Although written with a view to elementary instruction, and therefore with all 
practicable plainness, the subjects here presented are likely to be as novel, and 
perhaps as interesting, to older as to young readers. 
To those who may wish to pursue such studies further, and to those who will 
notice how much is cut short or omitted (as, for instance, all reference to dis- 
coverers and to sources of information), I may state that I expect to treat this 
subject in a different way, and probably with somewhat of scientific and historical 
fulness, in a new edition of a work intended for advanced students. 
A. 
Botanic Garden, Harvard University, 
February 20, 1872. 
Vignette Title-Page. — Left-hand side, an Ivy climbs by rootlets and a Passion-flower 
by tendrils ; right-hand, a Nepenthes by pitcher-bearing tendrils, and a Morning-Glory by 
twining stem : bottom, at the left of the centre, a Rhodochiton, and at the right a Maurandia 
climb by their leafstalks. Bottom, left-hand side, a Green Orchis (Habenaria orbiculata) sends 
up from between a pair of large round leaves a raceme of long-spurred flowers. Two Orchid 
Air-plants at the top, viz., Stanhopea tigrina at the centre, a Phalsenopsis at the right-hand 
corner. Two leaves of Sarracenia rubra, an American Pitcher-plant, rise from near the lower 
right-hand corner ; in front of them is a Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia ; at the centre a Venus’s 
Fly-trap, Dione&a muscipula. 
