Plants and Man : A Series of Essays Relating to the Botany of Ordinary Life

Contents: 1. A general outlook. 2. The green leaf. 3. The plant body as a whole. 4. The unlimited scheme of the plant body. 5. The fixed position of the plant body. 6. The seasons. 7. Meadow and pasture. 8. Woodland. 9. Moor and mountain. 10. The seashore. 11. Golf links and playing fields. 12. The flower garden. 13. The kitchen garden. 14. Dessert fruits. 15. Cereal grains. 16. Vegetable foods. 17. Mechanical construction of plants a the turgescent cell. 18. Mechanical construction of plants (B) the columnar stem. 19. Mechanical construction of plants (C) the leaf and root.

The interest of educated people in naturally enlisted in a subject so intimately related to ordinary life as is the study of plants. That interest only requires to be kept alive, or perhaps stimulated. It should not be quenched either by the exposition of what is merely title and popular, or by presentment in a style that is too technical and abstract.

It had long been the intention of the author to attempt the difficult task of preparing some statement, stripped as far as possible of technicalities, which should nevertheless reflect the current outlook on some of the fundamental features of the Science of Botany. The present aim is to explain, of the general reader, in very general terms, how plants fabricate for their own life commodities that Man finds so useful in his. The intention is to give a bird’s eye view of these far-reaching processes, though in some instances we shall willing be led into details : as for example in the case of the green plant cell, whence ultimately all organized living things draw their food. (jacket)