IRatuce IRotes : 
XCbe Selbovnc Societig’s abagasine. 
No. 122. FEBRUARY, 1900. Vol. XI. 
SELBORNIANA. 
Our President. — Every member of the Selborne Society 
will have heard with pleasure that Her Majesty has raised our 
Pre.sident to the peerage — an honour the deservedness of which 
no one will question. At their first meeting after the announce- 
ment was made the Council sent a message of cordial con- 
gratulation to Sir John. 
Death of an Illustrious Selbornian. — To Gilbert White 
knowledge was valuable for its own sake and Nature was 
admirable as the adaptation of its Creator. If to John Ruskin 
beauty of sense was the primary object and intellectual truth 
and moral goodness secondary, he was none the less in the 
highest sense Selbornian in the thoroughness, the honesty, and 
the reverence of his investigation of Nature. Whether he 
studied the forms of clouds or of snow-clad peaks, the structure 
of agates or the proportion between leaves and the twigs that 
bear them, though his object was artistic rather than scientific, 
Ruskin was a true follower of White, and in the death of the 
author of “ Modern Painters ” we have lost a champion of our 
cause. 
Alpine Flowers. — Our attention has been called by the 
Rev. H. E. A. Bull to the reckless destruction of Alpine flowers 
by English and other visitors to the Engadine. “ In such 
surroundings,” he writes, “ everyone must be captivated by the 
exceeding beauty of the flowers in the high regions, and no one 
would grudge the picking of some of the blooms ; but unfor- 
tunately there is with many visitors scarcely any limit to their 
destructiveness, and the paths about Pontresina are often littered 
in places with plucked and discarded blooms. A gentleman 
