3 1 4? Preservation of Botanical Specimens. 



Candolle's Prodromus, of which, to my sorrow, I must con- 

 fess, I can make no great show : and arriving at the Umbel- 

 liferae, which seldom escape we have to regret but two very in- 

 significant traces of damage, one of them on a large woody root, 

 and most probably on an unwashed part of it. In the Com- 

 positae, forming, perhaps, the ninth part of the whole collec- 

 tion, and one of the orders the most difficult to preserve from 

 insects, not a vestige of them was to be found in the large 

 divisions, which, to avoid writing more long names than 

 necessary, we will still call Corymbiferae and Cynarocephalae. 

 In Cichoraceae was the grand attack, seven out of the fifteen 

 injured plants belonging to that tribe ; and I think that an 

 examination of the circumstances of this case will prove a good 

 deal in favour of the solution, with the exception of Hypo- 

 chaeYis maculata, which is included in the list in consequence 

 of my having found there some dust proceeding from the 

 works of insects, but without being able to detect any injury 

 to the plants. AH the others in the list are of neighbouring 

 genera, so that the whole of the injured specimens, with all 

 the intervening ones, might have been taken from the her- 

 barium by the removal of a few sheets ; all the damage was at 

 the extremities of the specimens, near the open edges of the 

 papers, excepting in the case of Sonchus oleraceus, where a 

 larva was found in no very thriving condition; now this 

 was exactly the place in which he might have been expected. 

 Although inclined to admit the specific distinction of Sonchus 

 oleraceus and asper, I had placed them together before I 

 had made up my mind on the subject, and had not since 

 separated them. Looking to the great variation in S. olera- 

 ceus, from its deeply pinnatifidiform, to its state with entire 

 leaves, and the different degrees of asperity in S. asper, it may 

 be concluded that this sheet was well filled, while the great 

 size and extreme commonness of the plants would make 

 them likely to have been washed in a rather careless manner. 

 Is it unreasonable to suppose that all the damage in the 

 Cichoraceae, and, consequently, nearly half of that in the whole 

 collection was the work of this one individual, which, being 

 born in another sheet, had wandered from plant to plant, 

 without finding one on which he could subsist, until he arrived 

 at that which was probably one of the least effectively poi- 

 soned in the entire herbarium ? From the Compositae to the 

 end of the chapter, but three plants are noted : one of these 

 three individuals contained, perhaps, ten times as much insect 

 excrement, &c, as all the rest of the herbarium together ; and 

 where ? — in the inside of a capsule, whose internal surface 

 had certainly never been touched by the solution. 



