THE 'SHOWN TO THE CHILDREN' SERIES Edited by Louey Chisholm FLOWERS THE 'SHOWN TO THE CHILDREN' SERIES 1. BEASTS With 48 Coloured Plates by Percy J. Billinghurst. Letterpress by Lena Dalkeith. 2. FLOWERS With 48 Coloured Plates, showing 150 flowers, by Janet Harvey Kelman. Letterpress by C. E. Smith. 3. BIRDS With 48 Coloured Plates by M. K. C. Scott. Letterpress by J. A. Henderson. PLATE I: 1. LESSER CELANDINE 2. BULBOUS BUTTERCUP 3. MEADOW BUTTERCUP 4. MARSH MARIGOLD FLOWERS SHOWN TO THE CHILDREN by JANET HARVEY KELMAN DESCRIBED BY C. E. SMITH Illustration FORTY-EIGHT COLOURED PICTURES LONDON & EDINBURGH T. C. & E. C. JACK TO ALISON MARY OGILVIE AND DOROTHY CLARK Dear Children,--If you were old enough to go to the bookseller and ask for a book that would tell you about the flowers you see growing in the woods and fields in spring and summer-time, you would find there were already a great many books which had been written with that purpose. If you examined a few of these books, you would discover that in many the pictures of the flowers were not coloured, and that in these books the flowers were very difficult to recognise. And I think you would at once tell the bookseller you wished a flower-book with coloured pictures, where the flowers looked like real flowers. Then you would examine more books, some of which have beautiful coloured pictures showing every flower that grows in our country. These books are very large and cost a great deal of money. You would see, too, quite small books which said they could tell about the common flowers we find in our country walks. And I think you would buy one of these. But next day, suppose you were to find a bright blue flower growing in the field, and wished very much to know what it was called. You would open the flower-book and begin to look at the pictures, and there you would discover that the first picture showed a yellow flower, the next a red, the third a purple, a white or a blue, and you might have to turn over all the pages in the book before you found the flower you sought. After you had looked at the picture of your blue flower, I think you would wish to know something more about the flower, and would like to read the writing to find out what it said. But I am afraid you would not be able to understand what the flower-book told. There would be such long words telling about things you had never heard of, and you would begin to wonder if only older people could find out what books had to say about flowers. Now this new flower-book is written just for the purpose of telling little children about the flowers. And in order to make it easy, the blue flowers have all been put together in one part of the book, the yellow in another, and the white in a third group; so you can at once know in what part of the book you will see a picture of any flower you find.