BOTANICAL COLLECTIONS 1 09 



that the labor necessary for collecting, drying, and 

 mounting the specimens is largely not botanical, and 

 is excessive in proportion to the amount learned 

 through it about .plants. The question before us in 

 such cases is not whether a thing is valuable or not, but 

 rather, what will yield the largest returns for the time 

 and energy expended. Moreover, the great majority of 

 people have no taste for collecting, and extremely few 

 ever keep it up ; so their school labors in this direction 

 result in a bulky pile difficult to store and unattractive 

 to preserve. It is not, I would repeat, that such herba- 

 rium-making has in it no profit ; but simply that it is not 

 as a whole profitable. On the other hand, under some 

 circumstances, it may be very valuable, as when it is 

 used to cultivate in those with a talent for natural 

 history the collecting instinct, that first and plainest 

 mark of the naturalist. The best plan, then, would seem 

 to be to make the collecting voluntary, to be taken up by 

 those whom it interests. 



As to the plan of such an herbarium, what has 

 already been said about the museum herbarium ap- 

 plies here with equal force, and I believe it may best 

 represent, not the flora of a region, but principles of 

 morphology and adaptation. I have found in my 

 own experience that this plan interests many who 

 care not at all for a floristic collection. The search 

 in the native flora for examples of the different forms 

 of stipules, for kinds of protective structures, illus- 



