THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BRITISH PLANTS 421 
It is, I am sorry to say, impossible to acquit botanists of delibe- 
rate selfishness in the needlessly wholesale collection of rarities 
Mr. K. M. Holmes has mentioned how, when once a king over 
Sw 
ar 
and, on his return, six holes in the turf. Orchis ustulata does not, 
I believe, now occur in that district. eae we hear, as I have 
done within the last two years, of botanists collecting a hundred 
whole plants of Anemone Pulsatilla nt one locality; two hundred 
me new tropical orchid, we can only lament that sicectlonnibl 
should be unable io rise above mere trade instincts unworthy even 
of a —_ hawker 
stro rongly of opinion that it is inadvisable to Se in 
local Acti, and still more so in local guide-books, localities for 
rarities more precisely indicated than by the name of the rare or 
district in quite general terms. This, with oral tradition of a select 
ry 
lost. The Boston Park Commission in 1896 published a flora of 
their parks with special localities for rarities, merely prefixing the 
caution :—‘‘ The public should be exhorted, if they come across 
such plants as these, to preserve them ri gidly. seg true botanist 
h 
and lover of nature needs no such exhorta I = ut 
think this an in eae of misplaced Seothiiohee: e. The Rev. H. P. 
Reader, the excellent Dominican botanist, who eoludelthied that 
rare orchid, Cephalanthera rubra, in Gloucestershire, adopted a wise 
precaution when — to — the nares to the late Sir William 
uise, a grower of rare plants: he led him by many circuitous 
paths through the ser Eshing him back 2 another route, so that 
sioner gona oa’ cen e Th in toy Fite bears bk v.119, n.s. (1861). The 
writer, Mr. C. J. Ashfie field in which [it] grows is known 
1903, this 
asion of our visit. sid Ps we heard it was “ Froceup ” 
Bo 
* (We fear omy is only too much reason for this aes as instances given 
from time to time in this Journal have shown. We were informed the other 
y i a 8 practic y ex i some s in 
of its localities in the Norfolk fens by a botanist from London, who collected it 
in vast qu we remember to ha eard that a visitor to the same 
botanist’s herbarium was scandalized at seeing sheets containing hundreds of 
specimens of one of the 1 Teesdale rariti ourse this is not — 
but ous application of the instinct for collecting, yet it 
possible to con 2 relay? : [oe however, that Mr. Boulger’s selena 
y .—Ep. Jo 
JOURNAL OF ma 44. [Decemper, 1906.] 21 
