curate when printed and now out of date; and that in order to write with real authority it was necessary to begin de novo, by following up the life- history of every tree which had been cultivated in this country from the seed to the stage at which it was converted or convertible into timber. Another point which soon became evident was that the nomenclature of trees was often confused and incorrect, more especially in nurserymen’s catalogues and in the timber trade, and that an immense deal of research in herbaria, arboretums and libraries, both at home and abroad, would be necessary to come up to the high standard which I set up for myself.
As my time was too much occupied with various duties, interests and pleasures to devote it entirely to a new study, I looked about for a col¬ league who would help me; and at the suggestion of Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, then Director of Kew Gardens, I made a proposal to Dr. Augustine Henry, who was living at Kew and had recently passed through the Forestry School at Nancy, after returning from China, where he had lived for twenty years and collected plants with great energy and success. I here wish to say that, though joint authorship is not always successful, yet I am firmly convinced that when two men are able to work together continuously on as pleasant a footing as we worked together for twelve years, or as Mr. F.D. Godman worked during his whole life with my lamented friend Osbert Salvin, an immense advantage is gained in the results of the work. Because no one is so good a critic of the deficiencies, errors and omissions of an author as one who is himself an authority on the same subject, and as I should have been quite unable myself to give the immense labour which Henry gave to the study of trees in the unrivalled herbarium, library and arboretum of Kew, and to elaborate the botanical descriptions as he did, we agreed that the work should be divided into two parts for which each author should be personally re¬ sponsible, and which, though subject to the careful revision, additions and suggestions of the other, should be separately signed when printed with the initials of the man who mainly wrote it. This plan we carried out to the end, with what success I leave others to judge; and I can only say that though we did not always see things eye to eye, or agree about minor details, we never had a single serious case of difference during the progress of the work.
My previous experience in publishing privately an important work on the Lilies had also proved to me that where an author is prepared and able to finance a work of this size and cost himself, he will gain in many ways by dispensing with a publisher. No one can really tell when he begins a work of this magnitude what it will grow to, what it will cost, or how long it will take. If it is all written out ready for publication as ordinary books are written, the loss of knowledge will be immense, because one learns as one goes and fresh sources of knowledge are constantly being opened up in all parts of the world, by the fact of one’s own researches bringing one into correspondence with many people whom one would not otherwise know till it was too late to utilise and incorporate their knowledge. One of the criticisms which was made by the reviewers of the early volumes of our work was the lack of so-called order. That was true as far as botanical sequence went, but as the arrangement is purely
