Romance of Low Life Amongst Plants: Facts and Phenomena of Cryptogamic Vegetation

London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1893. Hardcover. Good (Contents very clean and bright; ex-lib., markings at spine, bookplate inside front cover, pocket inside back, usual markings; hinges cracked; cloth worn at extremities). Blue-green cloth with green illustration at spine and front cover; gilt lettering. 320 pp. with 60 bw figures. The growing interest in the lower forms of vegetable life, which has been stimulated during the past thirty or forty years by improvements in the microscope and in methods of manipulation, has led me to believe that an account of some of the most remarkable of the facts and phenomena of cryptogamic vegetation would prove of considerable interest to young readers, and even suggestive to older ones. It is not so much to the results of new or recent investigations that I have desired to give predominant interest, as to the general influence which increased knowledge of the structure and history of these minute and obscure plants has had upon the romantic beliefs and unsubstantial theories of a less enlightened age. - an excerpt. (Inventory #: 135407)