Preservation of Botanical Specimens. 313 



had been placed in the herbarium, and of which the inside 

 of the capsule had, of course, escaped being washed. 15. 

 Lilium tigrinum Gawl., one of the flowers gnawed. 



The above is a faithful account of every vestige of an insect 

 I could detect, and having shown the mischief in mass, amount- 

 ing to an average of one, usually very trifling, indication of 

 an attack in 2000 specimens, I may be permitted to make a 

 few observations, to place the circumstances in a clearer point 

 of view. The first thing to point out is, that in no one in- 

 stance was a specimen sufficiently injured to induce me to 

 remove it from my herbarium, in order to replace it by an- 

 other taken from my duplicates ; indeed, on again referring 

 to all the plants in the foregoing list, I doubt whether any 

 person would observe that a single one had been attacked, 

 now that the traces left behind by the insects have been 

 brushed away. The second point worthy of attention is, that 

 holding my duplicates freely at the disposal of my friends*, 

 and not wishing to be unprepared if called upon, I took them 

 to the chateau, where they were deposited in a large airy 

 room, exposed to the full light of the sun. In the course of 

 the summer, the whole were t gone over four or five times, in 

 order to make up different parcels ; and I may safely assert 

 that, on each occasion of passing them in review, there was 

 not one of the thirteen packets into which they were formed, 

 that did not furnish much stronger traces of insects than the 

 whole of my herbarium, after remaining so long untouched in 

 the midst of danger. 



It will be observed that, with the exception of a most un- 

 important attack on a single flower of Aconitum intermedium, 

 we pass unscathed through the whole of the large subclass of 

 Thalamiflorae in which were two considerable packets of Cru- 

 ciferae, peculiarly subject to depredations from insects ; and 

 two others, of Caryophylleae, to which they are by no means 

 averse. The Leguminosae, filling five of the largest parcels, 

 are unharmed ; and, in Rosaceae, of which insects are suffi- 

 ciently fond, the damage was confined to the nibbling of an 

 apple flower, and slight damage to the root of a specimen 

 of Potentilla, by which the plant had been held while 

 being washed, so as to receive but little of the solution; 

 and by the side of which were lying the mortal remains of 

 a fine specimen of Ptinus Fur. We then pass over the 

 whole of the orders comprised in the third volume of De 



* I hope that, among others, W. T. B. received the " pinch of Saxi- 

 frages," and the et caeteras, forwarded in the autumn of 1835, as I am 

 aware that the friend who took charge of the packet and chip box after- 

 wards transferred them to the care of a third person. 



Vol. I. — No. 6. n. s. a a 



