214 
NATURE NOTES. 
part of South America, from Africa except the north and the 
Cape region, from great part of India, from China especially, 
from the East Indian, Malayan and Pacific Islands would be a 
welcome addition to any herbarium in Europe. Expert collec- 
tors have travelled through such regions, but mostly have had 
quite enough on their hands with the flowering plants and ferns, 
or with some special group of cryptogams. Mr. Spruce, for ex- 
ample, has dealt with the mosses and hepaticae of the Amazons 
and Rio Negro most thoroughly, but the fungi of these regions 
are in need of like exploration. The Natural History Museum 
fulfils most of the functions of such a bureau of advice, and 
travellers who have the opportunity of collecting would do well 
to make use of it, that they may serve natural history instead of 
wasting time and pains in making pitiful collections of rubbish 
as many well-meaning travellers do. Such collectors are fre- 
quently by no means aimless people, but merely ignorant of what 
is desirable. They have the true love of nature in them, and the 
making of naturalists under proper guidance. 
There is, on the other hand, the type of man who is too well 
equipped for his work, so well that he ends by a contemplation 
of his equipment. He is more familiar to us at home, with his 
splendid microscope under a glass shade in his study window. 
This type goes abroad at times, after preparations befitting a 
new Challenger expedition. Nothing need be expected from him. 
“ The sea was too rough for dredging,” he tells us, “and I forgot 
my front-steering, double-gearing, vacuum-substage condenser, 
which put my microscope out of action, and the new patent catch- 
em-alive tow-net was burst by the current so soon as it was 
put astern.” 
Nearly akin to him is the over-educated young naturalist 
fresh from the University. He is like that dynasty which 
“ forgot nothing and remembered nothing.” Among the things 
he does not forget are the “ self-acting freezing microtome,” 
which will cut up any animal after the fashion of a sausage 
machine and lay out the sections double stained in rows, on 
turning a handle. He goes forth with it and with the newest 
thing for staining nuclei to investigate the development of the 
seven hairy embryos ; and among the things he does not 
remember are the names of the “common objects” in the land 
he visits, well enough known to the general public though the}'' 
be. He reaches bis destination, discovers the expected em- 
bryos are all well-grown beasts “and still growing” at this 
season ; and then sets gaily to work to make observations on 
Nature generally which read like a base parody of Darwin s 
Voyage of the Beagle or Wallace’s Malay Archipelago. He then 
calmly ranks himself alongside Mr. Forbes or Mr. Hickson, un- 
less indeed he place himself among the immortals just named. 
I expect considerably greater additions to Natural History 
from the steward of a certain cargo-steamer who has a pocket 
magnifier and the command of empty pickle-bottles and an 
