Page:Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse-Vol 1.djvu/10

2 not be added to the list. The present work differs from all others with which we are acquainted in several important particulars. It treats not so much upon gardens and gardening as upon the plants which give brilliance and charms to the garden. Its object is, primarily, to present reliable portraits of the representative or type plants of the principal genera that find favour in horticulture. In many cases these are of chief interest because they are the parental stocks from which, by cultivation, selection, and cross fertilisation, horticulturists have evolved the endless improved varieties that we now possess. To the compre- hensive floral portrait gallery or album thus constituted is added a brief description of the principal species grown in gardens, their horticultural history, and hints as to the treatment they should receive to enable them to thrive in our borders and greenhouses.

The method adopted is thoroughly popular so far as consistent with accuracy. Popular treatment of such a subject is worthless unless based upon scientific principles ; whilst, therefore, we have been careful not to introduce little-known technical terms unnecessarily, we have not hesitated to do so where precision called for them. A few of these words, accurately denoting the parts of a flower, must be used on every page, but these are now so familiar to all interested in garden or wild flowers, that we do not anticipate they will cause the slightest incon- venience to the merest novice in botany. Should, however, any difficulty arise, we must ask the puzzled reader to refer to the Glossary of Terms, which will be found in its appropriate place in the work.

The knowledge of the parts of a flower is a fragment of elementary botany which every person interested in plants and gardens must possess, for without it all descriptions, however simple, are unintelligible. It is illy upon this bit of science that all the wonderful work of the hybridiser, the maker of floral novelties, is built up; and in order that this flower structure may be perfectly understood, we give in most cases a vertical section showing the relative positions of the different parts of the flower, which will also make clear the methods of fertilisation in each, to which we have frequently called attention in the text. These dissections, together with the picture of the plant itself, will also render the work helpful to students of botany, who will find in it representatives of almost every one of the Natural Orders of flowering plants.

In the case of plants — such as annuals and biennials — that are chiefly grown from seed we have in many cases given drawings of the seeds and the young seedlings, to aid in their ready identification, and to make it easy to distinguish between the young plants and the weeds that threaten to destroy them in the seed-beds.