230 THE GROWING EVIL OF COLLECTORS 



minor). This is a lovely thing of the heath family, with 

 round fleshy bright green leaves the size of a halfpenny, 

 sending up after midsummer a column five inches high 

 of white, sweet-scented bells. It is one of our rarer plants, 

 very local, growing only where the plough has never come ; 

 wherefore, needless to say, it is greatly sought after by 

 collectors. But, although I generally manage to visit the 

 spot in July, to enjoy the fragrance and beauty of this 

 choice herb, to none but the most discreet dare I ever 

 reveal the secret of its presence. For aught anybody 

 knows, this colony of wintergreen may be older than the 

 Christian religion. Betray it, and its lustrous leaves would 

 gleam there nevermore. It is the student and the amateur, 

 not the master, who work the mischief. The first is too 

 often encouraged by school and college prizes offered for 

 ' collections ' ; the second, having a true love for nature, 

 perhaps learns too late how much mischief he has done. 

 But there is another class who carry on wholesale opera- 

 tions ; digging up wild roots by the hundred and bringing 

 them into great towns to be retailed to householders who 

 delight in all that reminds them of the country. Ferns 

 are especially the quest of such depredators. It is aston- 

 ishing the appetite that townspeople have for ferns, yet 

 of all green things these are the most impatient of the 

 smoke, radiated heat, and dry air of cities. The incident 

 of the dusky geranium took place four hundred miles 

 from London, whither, as yet, the wholesale spoiler has 

 not penetrated ; but the woodlands and lanes of Surrey, 

 Herts, and Essex are despoiled each spring of every kind 

 of herb that tempts the buyer. The legislature has been 

 invoked to put an end to this nefarious traffic. I think 

 a bill to that effect was before Parliament not long ago ; 



