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such as spring-beauties, dogtooth-violets, bloodroot and hepati- 

 cas, columbines, anemone, arbutus and pyxie, azalea and laurel, 

 wilk pinks, geraniums and roses and lilies and orchids, dogwood 

 and viburnums, are far better left to reproduce their kind and add 

 new loveliness in new places next year and for many years after. 

 Several times since our connection with the New York Botanical 

 Garden I have stopped children and teachers who were picking 

 flowers or breaking branches of trees, and have been told it was 

 for " nature study" or for " school" and when asked if they did 

 not know it was against the rules of all public parks to pick any- 

 thing, they almost invariably replied either that they had been in 

 the habit of picking in this place before it became a Park or a 

 Garden and did not see why they should not continue to do so ; 

 or they implied that the object for which they were to be used 

 justified the breach of law. The making of loan collections 

 for the teachers is an excellent plan, and the accumulation of 

 local floras at two or three different educational institutions also 

 will help them. For the children, there are the Museums of 

 National History and Botany and the Children's Museum in 

 Brooklyn, but we hope that besides these, we shall have for a 

 long time yet, places near the city, where the wild flowers may 

 be seen growing and that the children of the public schools may 

 not only learn to "know them byname and enjoy tliem" but leave 

 them' to continue their growth. The greatest destruction of all, 

 comes from the draining, clearing and cultivating of wild lands ; 

 and in the vicinity of large cities, by the continued extension of 

 their limits ; this, of course, is unavoidable. 



The Metropolitan Park Commission of Boston has printed a 

 Flora of the parks within their jurisdiction, compiled by various 

 local botanists who volunteered their services, organizing and 

 cooperating for this purpose. It was published in 1896 and 

 special localities were given for a number of rare plants, among 

 them Pogonia vevticillata, Habenaria fimbriata, Epigaea repens, 

 Kalmia latifolia and Conopholis Americana and in the preface we 

 find the following references to them : " The public should be 

 exhorted, if they come across such plants as these, to preserve 

 them rigidly. The true botanist and lover of nature needs no 

 such exhortation." 



It would be interesting to know, whether any injurious results 



