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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



possession (regardless of the fact that mere rarity makes a plant neither 

 more beautiful nor more instructive) leads him to uproot not one, perhaps, 

 but many specimens, or to buy from ignorant and reckless peasant 

 collectors, until such plants as our Cheddar Pink and Meadow-rue, or the 

 Edelweiss and other floral treasures of the Alps, may be in imminent 

 danger of extermination. 



As is so often the case, harm is more the result of ignorance or 

 thoughtlessness than of design. In connection with the excellent Nature- 

 study movement in the United States, we not only read of seventy-five 

 town teachers receiving a weekly barrelful of specimens ; but of 1,800 

 spocimons of Cypripediitm Regina gathered from ono spot,* of 150 

 Pitcher-plants (Sarracenia) sent from one bog in Massachusetts^ and 

 even of a circular asking for forty twigs, and adding " from one bush or 

 tree the desired forty can be obtained " ! Elementary teachers, I think, 

 require to be reminded that for instruction in anatomy, physiology, 

 ecology, or even systematic botany, common species are, in general, better 

 than rarities. 



It is, I am sorry to say, impossible to acquit botanists of deliberate 

 selfishness in the needlessly wholesale collection of rarities. Mr. E. M. 

 Holmes has mentioned how, when once walking over Ballard Down, near 

 Swanago, he saw six plants of Orchis ustulata, and, on his return, six 

 holes in the turf. Orchis ustulata does not, I believe, now occur in that 

 district. When we hear, as I have done within the last two years, of 

 botanists collecting 100 whole plants of Anemone Pulsatilla from one 

 locality, 200 specimens of tho rarer and equally non-variable Trifoliam 

 Bocconi from the Lizard, and the rarities of Teesdale in almost equal 

 numbers, or when we hear of the wholesale collecting of every specimen 

 seen of some new bulb in the Mediterranean region, or some new tropical 

 Orchid, we can only lament that gentlemen should be unable to rise above 

 mere trade instincts unworthy even of a street hawker. 



Having passed in review the dangers to which some of our most 

 beautiful and interesting plants are exposed, I turn to the various possible 

 remedies. So serious are the inevitable causes of local extermination 

 which I have described that it is assuredly worth while to do something 

 to check those causes of loss which are not inovitablo. I need add nothing 

 to what I have already said as to the recklessly wholesale clearing of 

 forest, as to the abatement of tho smoke nuisance, or as to tho desirability 

 of checking the wasteful expenditure of local rates on the deruralising of 

 our country roads. 1 propose dealing with other protective measures 

 under tho heads of concealment, enclosure, cultivation of wild forms, 

 transplanting, re-introduction, education, moral suasion, and legal protec- 

 tion, whether by existing laws or by fresh legislation. 



1 am strongly of opinion that it is inadvisable to publish in local 

 floras, and still more so in local guide-books, localities for rarities more 

 precisely indicated than by tho nam© of the parish or district in quite 

 general terms. This, with oral tradition of a select — very select — few, 

 will amply surhce to prevent any locality being lost. Tho Boston Park 

 Commission in 1896 published a flora of their parks with special localities 



* Mary I'cilc Anderson, loo. tit. 



f Mrs.' Britton, " Vanishing Flowers," p. !I0. 



