114 The Irish Naturalist, June, 
of delegates from the municipality and from local and 
artistic societies have been exceptionally successful in 
securing wild " parks " for rare plants. In Hessen and 
Oldenburg special attention has been paid to the preservation 
of primeval forest land ; while in the first years of the new 
century Prussia began to recognize the necessity of pro- 
tecting nature reserves, and these have since been regularly 
registered and mapped, Parliament, the Education Depart- 
ment, and the Department of Agriculture and Domains 
acting conjointly to assist the movement. Thus, Memmert, 
an uninhabited island between Juist and Borkum in the 
German Ocean, is now reserved as a bird sanctuary, with a 
watcher to look after it during the breeding season ; and 
a tract of salt marsh near Artern perpetuates the plant 
association of the locality. Elsewhere spots especially 
favoured by wild nature have been similarly secured ; for 
example, the Prussian Government, the local authori- 
ties and societies, and private individuals have all 
co-operated to secure the forest district of Chorin, near 
Berlin, including fenland and a small lake, also a tract 
of forest in the Hartz Mountains. Saxony has followed 
this example. In Holland, the Naardermeer, in the south 
of the Zuider Zee, with its rich avifauna, is now effectively 
isolated, while in Sweden immense stretches of country 
in the far north and elsewhere have been closed to the 
collector, not before it was necessary. It is common 
knowledge that before the reservation of the magnificent 
Lapland country round the Tornea Trdsk, and simultaneously 
with the opening of the Baltic- Atlantic railwaj^ the district 
was ruthlessly over -collected by dealers and others ; in 
one summer a single individual is credited with the removal 
of 10,000 plants. In Hungary there are several reserved 
areas ; one of them at Puszta-Peszer, in the Pest Comitat. 
In France good work has been done by the Forest Board 
in the protection of undergrowth and by some local pro- 
hibitions in the departments of Isere and Savoie on behalf 
of a few Alpine plants. Much the same may be said of 
Switzerland, where a few cantons have issued edicts against 
the destruction of Edelweiss and other " threatened " 
