P RE F AC E. 



During the present year the attention of naturalists has been pub- 

 licly invited to the increased and increasing disposition on the part of 

 the aristocracy to exclude men of science from their domains ; thus 

 the botanist is forbidden to wander over the naked hills of Scotland, 

 and the habitats of our rarest plants are closed against his approach. 

 In days when our nobles, glorying in their shame, thought it un- 

 worthy of their rank to be able to read or write, and kept a menial 

 for the discharge of all such degrading duties ; when they hanged 

 witches and burned heretics, it would have been in keeping to close 

 Glen Tilt and Braemar against the collector of herbs, least he should 

 bewitch the heathen, or practise some occult art on the red grous or 

 deer : but now when even dukes can read and write, when the 

 sciences of Botany and Geology are taught in our universities, when 

 our aristocracy generally are as well educated as our tradesmen, this 

 ostracism of science from their homesteads is an inexplicable return 

 to the loathsome practices of that feudalism which marked the most 

 degraded era of the human mind. The deed is rendered still more 

 obnoxious from the frivolity of the plea : geologists and botanists are 

 proclaimed poachers ; are placed on a level with the midnight deer- 

 stealer : the absurdity of the charge is only equalled by the ignorance 

 which it discloses. I rejoice to see the matter taken in hand by our 

 journalists, and trust it will not be abandoned until the universal cry 

 of " shame " has penetrated the ears of the titled leaders in this 

 crusade against science. 



The year which is now drawing to a close has been one of conside- 

 rable interest to the British botanist, and the *Phytologist' has taken 

 its accustomed lead in recording new discoveries and reviewing new 



