Excerpt from Illustrated Guide to the Trees and Flowers of England and Wales

This book is intended to help the ordinary nature-lover, who may perhaps have little or no special knowledge of botany, to find out the names of such trees and flowers as he meets with. If knowing the name, he will turn for further information to one of the larger works mentioned below, so much the better, but the name must come first. With plants, as with human beings, the first step towards a friendship, with all its future possibilities of interest and delight, is to learn your friend's name. No doubt even ignorant people get some sort of enjoyment out of nature, but it makes all the difference in the world to the pleasure of a country walk when, on every hedge-bank and in every ditch, we catch sight of familiar acquaintances, which we have learnt to greet by name, and to recognize as friends.

The method of using the illustrated "Key" is explained in Part IV. Of course, several Keys exist already, such as the excellent one in Bentham's "British Flora, " but these are mostly couched in very technical language, and often presuppose more skill and experience than the beginner has at his command. In the present work technical terms are avoided as far as possible, and the Key is founded on plain and easily observed characters, and such as do not involve dissection.

But the special feature of the book lies in the illustrations accompanying the text, which help to make its meaning clear at a glance. These figures are necessarily very small, and do not pretend to be complete pictures of the plants, but simply to illustrate the special characters used for the Key. By far the greater number of them were drawn direct from nature, for the particular purpose to which they are here applied.

The method of the Key allows the groups of Trees and Shrubs, and the Aquatic Plants, to be treated by themselves, and thus makes it possible to identify most of these without depending on their flowers, which are so often difficult to examine, or absent.

In short, the book aims especially at being practical, without, it is hoped, forfeiting all claim to be scientific. It tries to help the learner very much as a botanical friend might do, by pointing out, to the eye and the understanding at once, such characteristics as are found, by actual experience, to be easily recognized and remembered. The first draft of the Key was written more than twenty years ago, and almost every part of it has been altered and amended to meet practical difficulties.

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