223 
Ls « 
indices, mais pas de preuves absolument directes. Apres cet aveu il 
pourrait cependant réfléchir 4 la succession incontestable des flores 
et des faunes dans toutes les parties de la terre, et alors il lui serait bien 
permis de dire 4 ses juges, en parlant de l’espéce: ‘ E pur si mouve.’” 
§ 230. Southern Plants.—Mr. A. H. Curtiss, of Jacksonville, 
Florida, has issued his first fascicle of dried specimens of Plants of 
the Southern United States, well named, with full printed tickets, at 
the price of $20 for 250 species. We have Dr. Asa Gray’s authority 
for saying that the specimens are so well chosen, so full and in every 
way excellent, that they are very cheap for the money. 
§ 231. Some Rambling Notes on Collecting and Preserving 
: Herbarium Specimens, 
I. At present, judging from the letters I have received on the 
subject, there seems to be a disposition to make better specimens for 
the herbarium than has heretofore been deemed necessary. This 
desire for better workmanship is good and should be encouraged. 
A plant designed as a herbarium specimen has the possibility of 
a moderate immortality opened before it, for it may be destined to be 
preserved for centuries, and often be cousulted for reference when its 
preserver has long since passed away and perchance returned as food 
for the plants among which he so long delighted to linger and study. 
During the past few years I have answered many inquiries in 
regard to my manner of preserving plants, and as the queries still 
keep coming and there appears to be a felt want of fuller details on 
herborizing, I purpose, in two or three numbers of the BULLETIN, 
to offer a few suggestions on collecting and preserving botanical 
specimens. 
Let it be understood at the outset, that these prospective notes are 
mainly designed for those who wish to know how to make good 
specimens, and also for the younger class of botanists who have 
very little knowledge yet of the details of collecting and preserving. 
The old and experienced collector will probably find little that is 
new to him in these suggestions, as we suppose that the better class 
of specimens are prepared more or less in the same way. Comment 
on the notes will be welcome, and if, in any of my suggestions I 
go astray, I shall be glad to be set right, or if any one has a better 
method of preparing plants let it be given for the benefit of the 
novice and, in truth, of us all, as we are all groping after some-_ 
thing better and higher from the beginning to the end of life. 
Again, it is not to be supposed these notes will have any beneficial 
effect upon that class of collectors who claim (and they practise zeal- 
ously what they advocate) that a specimen is made more natural (?) 
by being hastily thrown into press in a hap-hazard kind of way, 
wilted and crumpled, and then left to take care of itself,—probably 
not looked at again, until taken out only partially dry but already 
black and mouldy, to make room for other specimens that are to be 
brought likewise into the same execrable condition. So long as our 
admirers of “nature’’ can secure in an exchange good specimens 
for their zafura/ ones, we apprehend they will go on complacently 
making their herbarium fodder and paying very little regard to what 
