About the Book
An unabridged printing of the second edition, to include over 160 woodcuts, and a comprehensive index: The Old And The New Philosophy Of Flowers (old notions as to the use of flowers, religion and science, extinct types of vegetation, reasons why flowers exist, relations between certain flowers and certain insects, etc.) The Geological Antiquity Of Flowers And Insects (conditions on which the fossilization of plants depends, the floral records of rocks, ages of ferns, conifers, and true seeding plants, tertiary butterflies, etc.) The Geographical Distribution Of Flowers (agencies of distribution, maritime plants and their distribution, conspicuous and inconspicuous floras, the yucca and its insects, character of arctic floras, etc.) The Structure Of Flowering Plants (the life of a plant, vegetation and reproduction, variety of organs in plants, stem and bark, leaf buds and flower buds, carnivorous plants and how they originated, etc.) Relations Between Flowers And Their Physical Surroundings (origin of orders, genera, species, and varieties of plants, time occupied in developing them, the duckweeds, starworts, sea-wrack, pondweeds, millefoils, and ruppia, singular structure of flowers of ditto, epiphytal habits to orchids, soda-loving plants, etc.) Relations Between Flowers And The Wind (coordination between insects and flowers, ditto between flowers and the wind, flowers of pines, nettles, pellitory, hop, oak, staminate and pistillate flowers, etc.) The Colors Of Flowers (poetical association of colored flowers, origin of colors in petals, change of color in autumnal leaves, meadow rue, marsh marigold, larkspur, monkshood, columbine, anemones, etc.) The External Shapes Of Flowers (adaptation of shapes of flowers to insect visitation, flowers of carnation, convolvulus, snapdragon, and sage, small flowers and their numbers, origin of ditto, etc.) The Internal Shapes Of Flowers (the anthers and their filaments, reasons for ditto, flowers of pinks, geraniums, willow-herbs, mallows, campanulas, and gentians, Darwin on ditto, aborted stamens, etc.) The Perfumes Of Flowers (divisibility of matter emitting perfumes, a language of smell, imitation of floral perfumes by modern chemists, hydrocarbon compounds and their instability, perfumes of rosaceous flowers, perfume of jonquil and narcissus, nectar or floral honey, structural changes in flowers, etc.) Social Flowers (Inflorescence of small flowers, flowers of field, madder, centaury, cinchona, elder, guelder-rose, and barren flowers, etc.) Birds And Flowers (Sunbirds, humming birds, brush-tongued parakeets, and honey-eaters, shapes of certain tropical flowers related to crossing by birds, birds and fruit, reasons for fleshy pericarps in fruits, colored seeds and their distribution, birds can partake of poisonous berries, etc.) The Natural Defenses Of Flowering Plants (mistaken ideas as to origin of prickles, thorns, and poisons in plants, habits of grasses, reason for hairs on stems of plants protective against ants, general correlation between animals and vegetables, etc.)