Fes, 1905. | BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 79 
found of far greater interest than a large number of 
specimens collected because of their rarity. Indeed, the 
chief value of the latter type of herbarium is merely to 
authenticate the fact that certain species have been found 
within a given area, while it is lable to the charge of 
tending to the extinction of rare species. 
But where the aim is to illustrate life-histories well the 
commoner species are to be preferred, inasmuch as they 
afford an abundant supply of material, often in varied 
environments. It is difficult to conceive of work more likely 
than the formation of a life-history herbarium to suggest, 
problems of vital importance in the investigation of plants 
as living beings, and to throw light on these problems and 
on the relations of plants to their physical environments and 
to other organisms as friends or as foes. 
It may be asked what a representation of a species such as 
is here advocated means, Briefly it may be expressed as all 
that can throw light on the species, from the origin of the 
individual until its decay, its morphology and internal 
structure, its nutrition, the adaptations by which it gains 
advantages or defends itself from injury in its struggle for 
existence, the dangers that it encounters, the injuries it 
suffers, the methods of multiplication or reproduction by 
which the species, as distinct from the individual, is preserved 
and enabled to hold its place or to spread more widely its 
reactions to changed environments, its tendencies to variation, 
its relationships with other plants, either of kinship or of 
mere resemblance, the associates it prefers, the partnerships 
it may form, the species it shuns, its relations with man, and 
other points of view that it would be tedious to enumerate. 
One or two concrete examples may help to make clearer 
this conception of a herbarium, It matters little which 
plants are selected for exposition, each requiring to be 
considered by itself, and treated so as to bring out its salient 
features, Charlock (Brassica Sinapistrwm) may be taken as 
an example. The development of the embryo during 
germination may serve as the starting point. Too small to 
be easily followed in dried examples of seeds, it should be 
shown in drawings; and the young plants dried should be 
shown in various stages of development from the earliest 
period of independent life (with only root, hypocotyledon and 
