TI1K PRESERVATION OF OUR WILD PLANTS. 



40B 



for rarities, merely prefixing the caution : -" 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." I 

 cannot but think this an instance of misplaced confidence. The Rev. 

 H. P, Header, the excellent Dominican botanist, who rediscovered that 

 rare Orchid, Cephalanthera rubra, in Gloucestershire, adopted a wise 

 precaution when asked to show the locality to the late Sir William Guise, 

 a grower of rare plants : he led him by many circuitous paths through the 

 woods, taking him back by another route, so that the old gentleman, 

 though he saw the plant growing, was not likely to find it again. 

 Another plant-lover in the same district, Atkins, whose name is familiar 

 to Cyclamen-growers, adopted another expedient. A neighbour collector, 

 named Wintle, remarked to him that some of the less common plants of 

 the neighbourhood - Bee-orchids, I think — seemed to be suffering from 

 the wholesale attacks of some new enemy, whether bird or slug he did not 

 know, by whom all their flowering-shoots were nipped off, " Oh," said 

 Atkins, " I did that, to prevent your finding them." However advisable in 

 the case of bulbous or rhizomatous plants, this plan is, as I have said, 

 likely to be harmful in the case of Orchids. 



Strict enclosure, as in the case on the Black Hill of Cromarty, already 

 mentioned, in that of one Kentish locality for the Lizard Orchid, and in 

 that of Cypripedi'Um CalceohlS, may be very desirable in such small and 

 almost unique habitats ; but it is expensive, and unless very complete - 

 almost necessitating a special keeper — might prove worse than useless by 

 calling attention to the rarity. 



Much good may, I think, be done by the cultivation of rare native 

 plants in botanical gardens, so that hawkers, collectors, or tourists seeking 

 souvenirs may, for a small sum, have; cut or growing specimens without 

 endangering the continuance of the rarity in its native habitat. This has 

 been most successfully done by M. Henri Correvon at Geneva, especially 

 in the case of the Edelweiss, and by friendly imitators at various gardens 

 in Italy and the Tyrol. I am very sorry that a bold attempt to do some- 

 thing of the sort on a small scale by Mr. Philip Cochrane at Berry Hill 

 has recently failed for want of the very moderate support for which he 

 asked. It would, 1 think, be most desirable to have such small gardens 

 in the Scottish Highlands for such rarities as those of Ben Lawers, in the 

 extreme West of England, in Yorkshire, where Messrs. Backhouse have 

 practically met this want, or the Lake District, and in the Channel 

 Islands. By supplying colleges, schools, and Nature-study classes with 

 material, and perhaps also with photographs, descriptions, and micro- 

 scopic slides, such an institution might be self-supporting. Jn the South 

 of France there are preserves of scarlet anemones, where for a small fee 

 you may enter and gather a few specimens, and it has been suggested * 

 that in the United States the Mayflower, Sabbatia, Fringed Gentians, &c. 

 might similarly be cultivated profitably. School gardens and the private; 

 amateur gardener, on the other hand, had better entirely refrain from the 

 attempt to cultivate the rarer British plants from wild specimens. 



It has been suggested that where an uncommon species is in danger 

 of extermination, as, for instance, where the sea is eroding a coast-line, 

 * By Mary 1'erle Anderson, loc. cit. 



