6 Opening Address, [Sess. 



start for liouie, collecting more plants on tlie way, and j)ress 

 down your plants in the vasculum to make room for fresh 

 treasures you may never have an opportunity of collecting 

 again. At night you get home so tired after your travels that 

 you cannot think of stai-ting to arrange and press your plants, 

 so allow the vasculum to remain untouched until next morn- 

 ing, when you think you will have plenty of leisure, and feel 

 more inclined to bestow time upon the careful arrangement of 

 the foliage and flower of each plant. The morning arrives, 

 and you turn out the contents of your vasculum before some 

 interested friend. To your dismay, you find that you pressed 

 the plants far too tightly into the tin box, crushing the flowers, 

 leaves, and stems, and rendering them useless for specimens. 

 When you come to your collections of the first day, which was 

 wet, you discover that all the plants are mouldy, and most 

 have to be thrown out. But what is even perhaps more 

 vexatious, you find that, through having gone over so much 

 ground during the three days you were from home, you have 

 forgotten the exact locality where you got each plant. How- 

 ever, you think this of secondary importance, and it does not 

 trouble you much so long as you can get the plants named. 

 On further examination of your mutilated specimens a few 

 days after your return, you find that some of them are quite 

 unfamiliar to you, and that even with the aid of an illustrated 

 Flora you cannot identify them. So you ask some botanical 

 authority to help you with their identification. Having got 

 the promise of his assistance, you send him a plant of each 

 variety collected. He has no sooner looked over the speci- 

 mens than he notices one to be a plant of the greatest rarity 

 in Britain, and never previously recorded from the locality you 

 have visited. He at once communicates with you, congratu- 

 lating you on your find, and asking for full particulars, with, if 

 possible, one or two specimens. To your dismay you discover 

 that, beyond telling him where you visited, you cannot state 

 any particular locality, and have only the one specimen which 

 he has identified. I need not try to picture to you the sorrow 

 and regret that fill the young botanist's heart, all through 

 endeavouring to do too much in a limited time. 



Permit me to remind you that when a rare plant is found, 

 the knowledge of its discovery should not remain concealed 



