12 
the education and enlightenment of your annual visitors, by the 
publication of leaflets on the flora of the district, and the organi- 
zation of field excursions judiciously shepherded by local naturalists. 
‘The other—a recommendation emitted not for the first or second 
time—that you should lay out and stock in Ambleside or else- 
where a small botanic garden, containing specimens, systematically 
arranged, of all except the commonest plants which the Lake 
District has been ascertained to yieid. Charge for admission ; 
cultivate rare species for sale; and you will at once protect those 
plants which amateurs will collect from your depository rather 
than eradicate from their native haunts, and will create an insti- 
tution not only self-supporting but remunerative. One parenthesis 
let me here interpose. If this proposal—if any proposal for the 
good of the district—is to thrive, you must jealously guard for 
yourselves and for your visitors the right of access to these beautiful 
spots, rich in botany, in geology, in scenery, which virtually consti- 
tute the Lakes. On all grounds, social or economic, landowners 
and lords of manors are amongst the worst enemies of the com- 
munity—leave us to extirpate them elsewhere, as we shall do, by 
socialistic legislation—but, here in Lakeland, band yourselves at 
once to keep their hands off what is a source of income to some of 
you, a source of joy and health to all. Otherwise, if strangers 
come to realise that the approach to Skiddaw is mutilated, 
convenient access to Easdale debarred, Wansfell a prey to 
‘“‘sufferance,” ascent to Loughrigg traversed by the devious bullets of 
experimenting patriots, their yearly influx will be diverted to less 
servile and less sophisticated regions, Lake tradesmen and inn- 
keepers will be ruined, and it will serve them right. It has pleased 
God to plant your life-long and abiding home in a spot which, for 
a few weeks in intermittent years, is to most of us a glimpse of 
Paradise ; is it too much to indicate, in such an enterprise as I 
suppose, some recognition of your less blessed fellows’ claims, 
some repayment of your own debt to Providence ? 
