ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 25 



THE STUDY OF LOCAL FLORAS. 



GERALD MacCARTHY, B. Sc. 



Every State iu the Union has a flora more or less pecnliar to 

 itself, and tliere is scarcely a county in any State wiiich has not 

 its local rarities, found nowhere else. 



Almost ev^ery community, too, has its botanical enthusiast, 

 who is not infrequently of the tender sex. Useful work has 

 been and is being done by these isolated observers. But because 

 of the lack of organized effort, and of a clear apprehension of 

 the end to be achieved by botanical study, a great deal of well- 

 meant energy is misap{)lied and wasted. 



The capital error of most amateurs and beginners in botany 

 is the exaggerated opinion they entertain as to the value of the 

 herbarium. 



There is said to exist in Hindostau a sect of religious enthu- 

 siasts who infest the high-roads by which travelers enter India 

 for the purpose of ingratiating themselves into the confidence of 

 strangers, wh(»m they then entice into some lonely spot and 

 murder as a sacrifice to the goddess Kali. 



We have among ourselves a class of scientific enthusiasts, 

 worshippers of the mummy god Herbario, who with unwearied 

 patience and tireless limb hound high-road and byway, bog and 

 mountain ])eak, ever on the look-out for floral strangers, whom 

 they ruthlessly sacrifice to the glue-and-paper deity. 



To laboriously collect, dessicate, ])oison and mount plants on 

 sheets of costly white ])aper, and then lay them away in a cabi- 

 net probably never to be disturbed during the owner's life-time, 

 may be good physical excercise, and is scarcely more straining 

 upon the brain than whistling. But it is a question whether 

 this is science. It certainly is not religion, nor yet common 

 sense, both of which prescribe as the proper aim of the activity 

 of a rational creature, "the greater glory of God and the im- 

 provement of man's estate." It is probably true that a herba- 

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