40 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ON PRESSING FLOWERS TO RETAIN THEIR COLOURS. 

 By Dr. Claud F. Fothergill. 



[Read March 2, 1915 ; Dr. F. Keeble, F.R.S., in the Chair.] 



When I was a boy at school two prizes were offered by the late Dr. 

 F. G. Smart, open to the whole school, for the best collections of 

 pressed flowers made during certain summer holidays. I am sure 

 there are many to whom Dr. Smart's name is familiar, for he was 

 later the founder of a Botanical Studentship at my old University, 

 Cambridge, and in many other ways showed great interest in Natural 

 History. I entered for this prize with great keenness and proved 

 successful in winning second prize, having pressed my flowers between 

 blotting-paper and boards. 



I learnt, to my no small disgust, that I only missed the first prize 

 as I had named my flowers with English names and not with the 

 Latin ones. However, I look back to that summer as the time when 

 I first became so truly appreciative of flowers that it gave me real 

 pleasure to find this one or that, and see it in its natural habitat ; 

 in fact I learnt then the pleasure of so appreciating a flower as to 

 regret picking it, which is perhaps the highest test of one's love for 

 wild flowers. The interest aroused then has never left me, and this 

 hobby has made innumerable walks and excursions in Switzerland, 

 Tyrol, and our own country doubly pleasant. 



If I may be allowed to digress here for a moment I would like 

 humbly to suggest that our Society organize a Pressed Flower Exhibi- 

 tion of wild and cultivated flowers, and that the majority of the prizes 

 offered be for competition amongst young people up to twenty 

 years of age. I venture to think that such an exhibition would stir 

 up a surprising amount of interest. 



I have tried to press and preserve flowers by a variety of methods — 

 in blotting-paper between boards, in sand, in ivory dust, &c, using 

 or not using preservatives of one kind or another. I found every one 

 of these methods unsuccessful, producing in most cases a brown, un- 

 interesting result, quite unlike the original in colour. 



My father and I made various experiments and finally hit upon 

 my present method of employing absorbent cotton-wool placed in 

 three layers, forming two compartments, between two grids, so to say, 

 consisting of a wire meshwork with half-inch squares, rather more or 

 less, with a heavy encircling band. The necessary pressure is obtained 

 by fastening one or two straps, preferably of webbing, around the 

 grids and tightening them as required. 



The flowers to be pressed and dried are placed between the layers 

 of cotton-wool ; more than three layers should not be used, otherwise 

 insufficient heat and air reach the flowers, and the drying being 

 delayed a bad result is obtained. The whole press, consisting of 

 cotton-wool containing the flowers, the two grids, and encircling straps, 



