My herbarium and its one enemy 



J. A. BATES 



My herbarium is sixty years old this spring. It con- 

 tains specimens from many countries, from Alaska, and 

 the top of North Cape, and the Himalaya Mountains 

 to New Zealand, and the crater of the Hawaiian volcano. 

 It has traveled thousands of miles, and has lodged in 

 scores of different houses. Yet, so far as its experience 

 goes, I can speak of "Its One Enemy. " 



For two of its sixty years, there was war with that 

 one. For fifty-eight no enemies have appeared to dis- 

 turb its peace. They have been around it. For two 

 years it was in a hot country, where insect life was abund- 

 ant. A crocodile, nine feet long, was killed one morning 

 on the verandah of the house where the herbarium was 

 lodged, and the other insects were legion-. (Buffon's 

 only proof, that the crocodile was not an insect was, 

 "He is too large. 77 Plainly not a scientific argument.) 



This rare peaceful history seems more peculiar from 

 the fact that I have for only twenty years poisoned plants 

 for my own herbarium. In those early days we never 

 heard of insects injuring an herbarium. Perhaps it was 

 because then ''Ignorance was bliss." But it was true 

 in college " Natural Philosophy " days before Dar- 

 win taught us of evolutionary laws and before the Cam- 

 bridge professor practised them, with the gypsy moth, 

 out of the window. 



Some credit for this may have been due to these things. 

 We mounted our specimens then, on double sheet- of 

 thin, but not pulpy or glazed paper. We fastened them 

 by stitching with linen thread, not by smearing with 

 Chicago "fish glue" or Pennsylvania "gum Arabic" paper 

 to attract enemies. And then my herbarium was kept 



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