Excerpt from Practical Guide to the Wild Flowers and Fruits Increasing interest in the wild flowers has led to a very general desire to recognize them, even on the part of those who undertake no systematic study of botany. This interest is furthered by the numerous excellent popular works which in their turn encourage the study of the standard authorities. In these books the recognition of the individual specimen is facilitated, it is true, by the arrangement according to families, as in the works of Matthews and of Weed; by that according to soil, as in those of Creevey and Lounsberry; and still more, for the uninitiated, by that according to color, first introduced, I think, in Dana's "How to Know the Wild Flowers" and used also by Blanchan, by Reed, and to a certain extent by Lounsberry. The arrangement according to time of bloom, used by some of these authors, is also of material assistance. Even with these aids, however, the search is often prolonged and baffling to one who has not mastered botanical analysis; and time may well be saved in the identification of a flower, to be advantageously spent upon these books in the study of its habits and history, its method of fertilization, and its place in verse and prose. The Guide has been prepared with this need in view. The plan adopted will render it comparatively easy for the learner, the amateur, or any person of ordinary intelligence to identify a large number of the common wild flowers and fruits, especially those of definite color and other marked characteristics. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.