456 CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 



In the United States of America the Wild Flowers Preservation Society- 

 has issued popularly written illustrated circulars, descriptive of individual 

 species that it is desired to conserve, and giving directions for rearing 

 them from seed. 



In South Africa many of the native species are protected and a series 

 of coloured drawings of protected wild flowers has been issued by 

 arrangement with the Wild Flowers Protection Society. 



The great enemy of our rare species is the collector ; the general 

 public takes no interest in them, but the collector wants them for his 

 herbarium ; and I don't know how you can reform the collector. He 

 knows he is doing wrong when he confiscates a single specimen or takes 

 from a small patch of a rare plant not only for his own collection but for 

 purpose of exchange. Increasing interest in the study of the mosses is, 

 Mr. H. N. Dixon tells me, threatening the extermination of some of our 

 rarer species because collectors want specimens for their own herbarium or 

 to supply friends at home and abroad. I was once approached by some 

 of our leading British botanists to reprove a serious offender who was 

 making a British herbarium. I administered reproof but the individual 

 almost wept his protests of innocence. He has long been dead but his 

 herbarium remains a standing reproach to his attacks of vandalism. 



To sum up. I have tried to show that native floras are worth pre- 

 serving in the interests of science, and that our own flora is of sufficient 

 interest, quite apart from its beauty, to merit conservation. In addressing 

 a scientific meeting I have emphasised the botanical aspect of the problem 

 but botanists are, I am sure, as wishful as anyone to preserve natural 

 beauty. I have referred to three methods for promoting preservation : 

 nature reserves, legislation, and education ; and the most important of 

 these is education. I am perhaps addressing only the converted, but the 

 converted must^become apostles if the movement is to grow and become 

 effective. 



Dr. W. D. Lang, F.R.S. (Communicated by Sir Albert E. Kitson, C.M.G.) 

 — The Menace of Rubbish Dumping in Places of Natural Beauty. 



Themethodofdisposalof rubbish is characterised by insanitation , unsight- 

 liness, and damage to places of natural beauty, with the rat-menace as the 

 predominant danger. 



Since the advent of cheap motor transport the nuisance has greatly 

 increased. Old quarries, gravel-pits, sea-cliffs, stream banks, former water- 

 channels and other places— once covered with beautiful and interesting 

 vegetation, and full of bird-life — forming ideal picnic grounds, have been 

 nearly or completely spoilt by being covered with tins, food-cartons, out- 

 worn parts of motor and other vehicles, old bedsteads and other discarded 

 material of our civilisation. 



Particularly mentioned are various parts of the Dorset coast in the Char- 

 mouth and Lyme districts, such as Black Ven, Butterfly Dell, Fairy Dell, 

 and the mouth of the Char, some of these having geological sections regarded 

 as classic examples by our own and visiting foreign geologists. 



It is suggested that public authorities might by co-operation organise an 

 efficient and adequate system to collect such refuse, burn all combustible 

 matter in destructors, reduce tins and other utensils to smallest bulk by 



