212 AFOOT THROUGH THE 



the safe conveyance to the camp, in a condition in which 

 they can be examined, the trying of the eyes in a badly- 

 lighted, close tent when too windy or too wet to work 

 out of doors, the impossibility of finding a really dry 

 case, or, when travelling quickly and lightly, finding 

 time or opportunity of renewing papers, without which 

 precaution one is certain to lose the greater part of the 

 specimens by mould. Insects, too, are very destructive, 

 in fact all the forces of the atmosphere and of animal 

 life array themselves against the collector, and it is 

 decidedly advisable, if time will only allow, to make a 

 sketch of each individual flower, with an accurate 

 description written below. However roughly executed, 

 they will prove a better guide than mouldy and muti- 

 lated vegetables. 



Beautiful and characteristic are these flowers, 

 supplying a sympathetic, cheering background to the 

 most depressing and dreariest hours of camp life; still, 

 they never take the big place in one's life that the forest 

 trees do. Years ago I read a story in which the trees 

 played the principal parts, and spending many days 

 and nights alone under their shade, it was difficult to 

 refrain from gifting them with human traits and 

 qualities. Among the principal varieties I knew 

 were the blue pines, so tall and stately, kindly 

 generous in their gifts of shade and shelter, like 

 large natures appealed to by the weak; the vast 

 chenaars, with trunks huge enough to be used as halls, 

 so full of life that they continue cheerfully and proudly 

 to put forth, spring after spring, green mantles of 

 delicately-shaped leaves though their stems are 

 hollowed, and three hundred years of life have robbed 

 them of much vigour ; the gigantic " brimij " (Celtis 



