PREFACE. 
The first step in any new career is confessedly 
the most difficult; that step, however, once 
taken, every succeeding one becomes compara¬ 
tively easy: this is especially true with regard 
to authorship. 
When the writer of the present work gave her 
volume on flowers to the public, she contem¬ 
plated with full as much fear as hope the novel 
position in which she had placed herself, and 
almost started 
“ E’en at the sounds herself had made.” 
Her apprehensions were, however, soon allayed 
by the favour, so much beyond her most san¬ 
guine anticipations, with which her publication 
was received. This reception, if it did not sug¬ 
gest, at least greatly encouraged her in her pre¬ 
sent undertaking, the subject of which leads her 
to hope that those who listened kindly to her 
