64 J. H. MAIDEN. 
sure that in country districts there are hundreds, nay, even 
thousands of private citizens, and officials such as engineers, 
surveyors, mining, land and forest officers, school teachers, post- 
masters, and many others, who would give voluntary aid to the 
furtherance of a botanical survey. Many would, in their spare 
moments, gladly supply information and collect specimens if they 
knew what would be acceptable. But while the work must be 
largely voluntary, it need be none the less systematic. I have 
conducted an informal botanical survey on my own account for 
many years, but my correspondents, although many, do not 
represent the whole of the colony, and their work has been neces- 
sarily of a fitful and unorganised character. 
In time to come we shall not only have geological and mining 
surveyors, but also agricultural and forestry surveyors. I use 
the word surveyor (as regards agriculture, forestry, etc.), not so 
much in the sense it bears as applied to a land-surveyor, for a man 
may be able to furnish valuable information suitable for a botanical 
and agricultural survey, and yet be incapable of using a theodolite. 
To summarise, I would use the term “ botanical survey ” as corre- 
lative to geological survey, and it would include observations 
applicable to :— 
a. Pure Botany. 
b. Agriculture. 
c. Forestry. 
d. Horticulture. 
Let us touch upon these heads in a little detail. 
a. Pure Botany.—An obvious advantage to the systematist 
would be that material from a wider area would be available, and 
thus he would be better able to define the limitations of species 
and varieties than he is at present. How frequently we have ~ 
to deplore the one-sided description of a species, often prepared 
from one specimen, from one locality, in ignorance perhaps of 
the amount of variation the same plant undergoes a very short 
distance away. <A botanical survey will above all things secure 
thoroughness ; its action will be comparable to that of the wide- 
