THE PRESERVATION OF OUR WILD PLANTS. 



405 



second is a practical question that must be solved quickly, or it will l>o 

 too late." 



Much may undoubtedly be done in time by the teaching of our 

 primary and secondary schools. Teachers should inculcate that un- 

 selfishness of which I have spoken, and a respect for even the com- 

 monest beauties of our fields and hedges, teaching children not to pick 

 even Buttercups and Daisies merely to throw away again almost imme- 

 diately. The school garden is an invaluable means of arousing an interest 

 in the life and life-purposes of the plant, and so creating the sentiment 

 we want to see aroused. Teachers of field-botany may well demonstrate 

 mainly with common species, point out how much may be learnt of any 

 plant without uprooting it, and abstain from taking large classes of children, 

 or of students who are not well under control, to the habitats of rarities. 

 I anticipate but little difficulty in this part of our task, as we may expect 

 a ready response from the intelligence of our teachers. As has been well 

 said,* " The new hunting with the camera in place of the gun is already 

 gaining ground ; the new herbarium composed of mental pictures should 

 find its way into our schools." The distribution among teachers of leaf- 

 lets stating the case, and perhaps the provision of an elementary reading- 

 book, intermingling interesting accounts of plants and plant-life with 

 appeals for plant-protection, should assure our ultimate success in this 

 direction. 



The education of adult sentiment is more pressing and more difficult. 

 As our wild plants, like our birds, are of little or no money value, it must 

 be an education of sentiment, and we cannot compel adults to listen even 

 to reason. The institution of " Arbor " or " Tree-planting Days," though 

 meant primarily for the children, may, it is hoped, also interest their 

 elders, and afford one opportunity of inculcating those simple lessons 

 (such as the right and the wrong way to pick flowers) which many adults 

 require as much as children. Other obvious methods of moral suasion 

 are the giving of popular lectures, the circulation of leaflets, and the 

 establishment of a press bureau. Strange as it may seem, it is neces- 

 sary to point out, with regard to the sale of wild plants in the streets of 

 our large towns, that it is the demand that creates the supply, that if 

 there were no purchasers there would be no dealers, if there were no 

 receivers there would be no thieves. It may also be desirable to erect 

 notice-boards requesting the public to abstain from uprooting plants, 

 picking rarities (which might for purposes of identification be repre- 

 sented by coloured drawings), or large quantities of common flowers. It 

 may well be urged that the organisation of such a crusade of sentiment 

 requires some central society with a journal, such as " The Wild Flower 

 Preservation Society of America " and its official organ, " The Plant- 

 World." f Local Natural History Societies and Field Clubs can do much. 

 I would suggest that every such society should enumerate among its objects 

 "the discouragement of the practice of removing rare plants from the 

 localities of which they are characteristic, and of exterminating rare 

 birds, fish, and other animals " ; and that in the agenda for every meeting 

 of such society should appear the question : " Has any member to report 



* By Mary Perle Anderson, loc. cit. 

 t Dr. F. H. Knowlton, loc. cit. 



