Notes on the Study of Botany. 259 



cataloguing, and, if the necessary appliances are obtainable, laboratory 

 work with the microscope. 



The best place to begin collecting is where you live. Be your 

 abode where it may there are surely some plant rarities near it, and the 

 first goal to struggle for is a through knowledge of the resources of your 

 own vicinity. When you have made a special study of the plants 

 there you may easily extend your researches. If on your excursions 

 you can have the company of some older botanist so much the better, 

 since from him you can get the names of the plants you gather and the 

 prominent characters on which the naming is founded. I would, how- 

 ever, strongly advise you always to take home one or two unnamed 

 specimens, on which to practice analysis, for it is only by such practice 

 you can ever become so familiar with the orders as to be able to, at 

 least pretty nearly, locate strange ones at a glance. The accumulation 

 of a mass of unnamed plants is to be avoided, lest a pleasant task 

 becomes a wearisome labour, inspiring only disgust. Make it a rule to 

 get your specimens named as soon as possible. If you have no one 

 near to whom you can show them, enter into correspondence with some 

 botanist and arrange with him to name the packets you may send him 

 from time to time. You need not fear that your letter asking the 

 favor will be unanswered. The wonderful spirit of fellowship, 

 comradeship if I may call it so, existing among scientists, and evinced 

 by their willingness to lend a helping hand to even the humblest 

 volary, is to me one of the greatest charms in scientific pursuits. But 

 here a word of warning, never send scraps of plants to be named, for 

 though a good botanist can often identify them, it is unfair to ask 

 him. His time is too valuable to be spent in guessing riddles. Courtesy 

 also demands that in all correspondence the seeker after information 

 should enclose stamps for return postage. In collecting a specimen for 

 yourself, if it be at all rare, always, if possible, gather duplicates to be 

 used in exchange. Under no consideration, however, obliterate a rare 

 species from any locality, and do not even make its whereabouts known 

 to any except true lovers of the science. There are vandals, who, 

 through mere vanity, would not hesitate to destroy the last survivor of a 

 species ; nor would they do it only unthinkingly. From the duplicates 



