Notes from my herbarium. Y. 
WALTER DEANE. 
My seedling collection. 
As the spring of 1895 opened and the first delicate green 
began to appear, I found myself considering how I should add 
to my herbarium. All the plants that I might collect in the 
vicinity of Cambridge were already represented in my collec: 
tion in flower, fruit, root and seed, and it seemed at first 48 
if I must wait till the summer vacation might give me an Op 
portunity of visiting some fresh locality. I was strolling one 
day over a bit of waste land, watching the little plants push 
ing their tiny heads above the ground, and thinking how im- 
possible it was for me to name a single one of them in that 
early stage of their growth, when suddenly it occurred to me 
to make a collection of seedlings. Why shouldn't they have 
a place and an important place, too, in an herbarium? They 
are the beginning, the promise of the future plant, and yet 
we pass them by and refuse to recognize them. Then it 
would be interesting to compare these early forms with the 
full-grown plants and to see how the leaves in the two case 
resembled each other. So I decided then and there ee pe 
a collection of as many seedlings as I could. This I did, a 
during the months of May, June and July I was engaged , 
as fascinating a piece of work as I have ever done in a bota 
ical way. 
seedlings, I collected a number of them carefully, and if they 
were small enough, as was generally the case, they wen! ky 
into the little press. I then marked the spot in some Way 
future visits, and in t de as a 
as half a dozen trips to the same patch, taking away spec! 
cies from the seedling to the full lant, or at 
: : grown plant, ; 
an identifiable form, all collected from the same spot 5°™ 
[210] 
