39 



avoided, as this could only be prevented by such an amount of fore- 

 thought and of botanical knowledge as cannot be looked for among the 

 members in general. The Society sends out lists of the species which 

 are likely to be wanted, or of which no specimens remain on hand. 

 Some of these may be species of rather frequent occurrence, and of 

 which very few specimens would suffice to meet the applications of 

 the few members who would apply for them. But this circumstance 

 of their frequent occurrence places them within the easy reach of 

 several contributors, who therefore dry and send them to the Society 

 in large numbers, and the aggregate amount includes probably ten 

 times the number which will be applied for during several years. As 

 an example of this, I may cite the Gentiana campestris, which was 

 marked as a desideratum because there were no specimens of it in 

 hand, and three or four young southern botanists had applied for it. 

 In the ' London Catalogue' this species is followed by " 16," in the 

 scale of rarity, which extends from 1 to 20 ; the latter indicating the 

 highest degree of frequency, to which 16 makes a tolerably near ap- 

 proach. Nevertheless, one contributor sent more than two hundred 

 specimens, and as several others also sent about fifty each, the aggre- 

 gate result exceeded five hundred specimens of a species, which is so 

 little rare that not twenty of them may be applied for in the next three 

 or six years. If the Society were to keep this large number of speci- 

 mens, they would not only occupy so much space uselessly, but they 

 would serve as an undisturbed breeding-place for those insect pests 

 which become so troublesome among large collections of recently 

 dried plants, and which rapidly spread after a first generation has 

 come to maturity undisturbed. Now, if contributors would only 

 make use of the data for judgment, placed before their eyes in the 

 Society's ' Catalogue of British Plants,' and dry and send few speci- 

 mens of those species which are marked by high Nos., they might 

 spare this waste of their own time and trouble, and turn their efforts 

 to a more useful end. 



Another circumstance which leads to the destruction of many spe- 

 cimens is found in the condition of the specimens themselves. Com- 

 paratively few now require to be destroyed on account of that former 

 carelessness in the drying which produced wrinkled up or badly 

 coloured specimens ; but great numbers are unavoidably destroyed 

 on account of being too long for the Society's paper in which the 

 duplicates are kept for distribution; and a still greater number suffer 

 the like fate on account of being only fragments, where full specimens 

 might have been easily sent instead. The former defect is the result 



