This book is far indeed from being a scientific treatise On Flowers and Flower-Gardens:—it is mere gossip in print upon a pleasant subject.
But I hope it will not be altogether useless. If I succeed in my object I shall consider that I have gossipped to some purpose.
On several points—such as that of the mythology and language of flowers—I have said a good deal more than I should have done had I been writing for a different community.
I wished to make the subject as attractive as possible to some classes of people here who might not have been disposed to pay any attention to it whatever if I had not studied their amusement as much as their instruction. I have tried to sweeten the edge of the cup.
I did not at first intend the book to exceed fifty pages: but I was almost insensibly carried on further and further from the proposed limit by the attractive nature of the materials that pressed upon my notice.