When I was a young girl I can well remember how much I longed for some simple book that would help me to learn, not merely the name of a plant and what class and order it belonged to, but something about its life-history.

It seemed very wonderful that, if I put seeds into the ground, dry and dead as they looked, I might feel sure young plants would presently come up; that, if I planted an acorn, a young oak-tree would in due time be seen; but how all this came to pass I could not discover. I had access to an excellent library, but although I searched there hour after hour, and found many a learned book about plants, they might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all I could understand of their scientific pages. There seemed nothing suited to the mind of a thoughtful child, and although, since that long-ago time, endless books have been written for young readers and thinkers, delightful books, too, which meet the needs of those who desire information and instruction, I have not hitherto met with one that makes the careful study of plant-life really interesting and practicable for those young people who may not have a teacher to help them in their study.

It has been my aim in the little volume I now venture to send forth to my young friends, known and unknown, to supply this deficiency. I want to enable them to share the joy of spending hours in a garden learning to understand the structure of plants. I want to make them able, when they see a bud, or a root, or a twig, to know what the history of that object is, how it comes to have the shape it takes, how it developed into its present condition, and what its next form will be.

The possession of the simple facts which I have tried to make plain to every intelligence in the following pages will turn a country walk from a useless lounge into a lively object-lesson, delightful, from beginning to end, alike to teacher and taught. Nor will I apologise for the simple language which I have used, for my design has been, while taking advantage of all the latest discoveries of science, to use no terms and introduce no ideas which cannot be made intelligible to a thoughtful child. In the hope that even so humble an effort as this may not be without a use in enlarging and quickening a sense of that infinite harmony which runs through every part of the Creator’s marvellous plan of nature, I put forth, not without a full sense of its inadequacy, this little volume. It has, at any rate, given me an excuse for endless hours of pleasure within the precincts of my own woods and garden.

I have to acknowledge great indebtedness to Mr. J. W. Odell, F.R.H.S., whose wide knowledge of botanical science has been of essential service in ensuring, as far as possible, the accuracy of my statements.

ELIZA BRIGHTWEN.