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eminence to a level with every mud-splasher who wilfully dashes along on the 

 very verge of the path, but every green oasis that formerly gladdened the eye is 

 hedged off — every gate, surmounted with a formidable chevaux-de-frize, frowns 

 upon the hopeful eye — 



" Even the bare-worn common is denied" — 



and not a stile remains to offer a meditative lounge, which must now be sought, if 

 at all, within those hallowed recesses where, thanks to legislative wisdom, you 

 perceive you are " Licensed to be drunk on the premises /" 



But " what 's the use of sighing ?" I can have no hope to soften or macada- 

 mize the heart of the obdurate road-surveyor. But there is another enemy that 

 I may hope to touch, and that is the botanist himself. Whoever has sought for 

 the rarer plants, as I have done, in the habitats mentioned in " the books," must 

 have often with me have felt the pang of disappointment at finding no traces of 

 the species in the designated localities ; and so much did this feeling operate upon 

 the late Mr. Purton that, in his Midland Flora, he declared that no plants should 

 appear unless observed by himself or some living authority he could depend upon. 

 But the rapacity of even living collectors is unfortunately proverbial, and it often 

 defeats itself. I have known young enthusiastic botanists, on being taken to the 

 locality of a rare plant, rashly root up every one that could be found ; so that 

 either the species in question was actually eradicated there, or at any rate the habitat 

 became " unproductive" for some years to come. There was much good sense in the 

 country dame I have heard of who incessantly and invariably aimed to impress upon 

 all about her the maxim " always keep an egg in the nest :" and this is equally appli- 

 cable to botanical as to pecuniary affairs. If a rare plant, when found, is indiscri- 

 minately gathered, without " leaving an egg in the nest," not only is the next 

 botanist who may come to the spot disappointed, but it may be even imagined, 

 and not altogether unjustly, that the plant in question was never really met with 

 there, while even charity herself is compelled to suggest that " some mistake" 

 must have arisen. Hence my invariable custom is, where more than one plant 

 presents itself, to " leave an egg in the nest ;" and I recommend this principle to 

 my brother botanists. Of course, where specimens abound there can be no harm 

 in " making hay while the sun shines ;" and I shall now, therefore, without fur- 

 ther circumlocution, proceed to my herborizing avocations. 



Abergavenny is a good central position to radiate from into the surrounding 



the turnpike on the Tewkesbury road ; here I observed it for several successive years, till, 

 in 1830, the fiat went forth, the road was widened and altered, and the plant lost. I have 

 now in my herbarium a specimen of Verbascum virgatum which I gathered in 1 828, growing 

 by the side of the Kidderminster road, about two miles from Worcester; I again noticed it 

 the following year, but the strictest search since has been unable to detect it. 



