96 WILD FLOWER PRESERVATION 



the herbarium, roots must be dug up and 

 studied and examined, or your knowledge of 

 plants will be very incomplete; but the roots 

 of rare species should on no account be dis- 

 turbed. 



Never tear up handfuls of plants to choose 

 out the best afterwards and throw the re- 

 mainder away ; and please do not pick a bunch 

 of grass because some coy little flower is hid- 

 ing in the middle of it! This really is not 

 1 1 playing the game. ' ' 



Do not aim at mounting as many plants as 

 possible in your first season. It is hard to 

 resist such a temptation, but it must be over- 

 come if disappointment is to be avoided. The 

 average botanist has too many other duties to 

 be free to devote a great deal of time to press- 

 ing flowers; and if a number of plants are 

 hurriedly pressed, simply because they are 

 there to be pressed, the result will be extremely 

 dismal. At the end of a few months you will 

 have decided that half this book is pure rub- 

 bish! It is small comfort to have a hundred 

 specimens in the herbarium if only thirty are 

 recognizable and only ten really beautiful. 



