SEPTEMBER 229 



should creep into all the secret places of the country and 

 rob them of their rarest treasures ? The veneer of science 

 with which they gloze their crime only deepens the guilt. 

 A child or a maiden passing that way might pluck the 

 blossoms to fling them by the wayside in five minutes, 

 and no harm done ; but the mischief wrought by these 

 wretched botanical prigs is irreparable. They prey, not 

 on flowers, but on specimens for some beastly herbarium, 

 and a specimen must include the whole plant, root and 

 branch, flower and fruit, wherefore it comes to pass that 

 never more must the eye of one faring through this wood 

 of mine be pleased by lighting on the dusky geranium, 

 because the solitary plant thereof, known to and beloved 

 by me for half a century, now lies sapless and faded, 

 pressed and gummed between sheets of paper, where may 

 the worms speedily attack and destroy it ! May the thief 

 himself forget all about botany, and become possessed by 

 the most acute form of philately, and be for ever baffled 

 in obtaining the specimens upon which the victims of that 

 form of mania set the highest value ! 



In all seriousness, the evil wrought by plant-collectors 

 is a very real and growing one. The real man of science 

 lighting upon some rare plant knows better than to dig 

 it up. He notes its occurrence furtively, and studiously 

 avoids publishing the exact locality, bearing in mind the 

 disappearance of the blue alpine sowthistle and the blue 

 menziesia from their only haunts in Britain the first 

 from Lochnagar, the other from the Sow of Athole. For 

 thirty years and more there has been known to me a 

 heathy crag, far up in the southern uplands, where, among 

 the heather, between the stems of scattered birch and 

 stunted oak, there are some plants of wintergreen (Pyrola 



