Fes. 1905. | BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 71 
to the study of botany. The dried plant is an inadequate 
substitute for the living and growing plant, and finds its 
principal use in the authentication of botanical discoveries 
made in distant lands. The habit of collecting plants for 
the herbarium may be hostile to the close study of the 
environment, and confirm the pernicious belief that the 
thing of chief importance is to be able to name a plant as 
soon as you see it. One lamentable result of that rapacity 
of collectors is that our native flora has become sensibly 
impoverished of late years. There is little gain to science 
by way of compensation, Amateur herbarium botanists 
have not, in our own time and country, done much to solve 
important questions of any kind; and they often propagate 
the misleading notion that rare species are better worth 
attention than common ones. The rarity of a plant is a 
reason, not for gathering a flower and drying it, but for 
letting it alone, unless, indeed, you can accomplish some 
important and unselfish purpose only by its sacrifice.” 
“Tn our opinion, both herbaria and museums are indispens- 
able to scientific progress. They have their uses even to 
children, and many naturalists have begun by collecting. But 
there are things more advantageous and more appropriate to 
the first stage of botanical study than the accumulation of a 
pile of wild-flowers, dried and named. School collections, 
illustrating the dispersal of fruits and seeds, the shapes of 
leaves in connection with bud folding and exposure of the 
largest possible surface to light, resistance to drought or 
cold, ete., may be made to gratify the collecting instinct 
in a harmless way, and at the same time to promote definite 
inquiries. It is the mechanical habit of collecting for selfish 
ends, and without any scientific purpose, that we wish to 
discourage.” 
The last of the paragraphs quoted should probably be 
accepted as the committee’s estimate of the true value of 
herbaria and museums, inserted to prevent the view that 
herbaria, and to a less extent museums, are of little if of 
any value—a view that might be held as advocated in the 
previous pages of the report. But, even thus safeguarded, 
the whole report is an indictment of the investigation of 
local floras and of the formation of private or other small 
herbaria, and may readily be interpreted as a condemnation 
