210 
NATURE NOTES. 
more and more fascinating. It will introduce into the dull 
routine of country life an object which is capable of arousing 
and sustaining the interest and of engaging the mind. 
The full titles of the works quoted above are : — 
Handbook of Mosses, by James E. Bagnall, A.L.S. London: 
Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Third edition, 1889. is. 
British Mosses, by the Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry, LL.D., 
F. R.S., F.S.A., F.L.S. London : Witherby & Co. 1892. is. 
Key to the Genera and Species of British Mosses, by the Rev. H. 
G. Jameson. West, Newman & Co., 54, Hatton Garden, E.C. 
1891. IS. 6d. 
Synopsis of the British Mosses, by Chas. P. Hobkirk, F.L.S. 
London : L. Reeve & Co. Second Edition, 1884. 7 ^- 6d. 
Nouvelle Flore des Mousses et des Hepatiques, par Prof. I. Douin. 
Paris : Paul Dupont. 1892. 5fr. 50. 
Antony Gepp. 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR SCHOLARS? 
A Call to the Selborne Society. 
E are all agreed that England, with its bird-life undimin- 
ished, and its flowers un-uprooted, may be Merry 
England still, but we have not recognised that it will 
be thoughtful England also. 
It is not till we read the poets that we learn how much of 
the freshness of their song to quicken and inspire, and to make 
patriots and thinkers, has been the result of a land whose 
flowers change with all the changing year, and where birds are 
heard with varied note as nowhere else in the world. 
How are we to keep this precious heritage of bird’s song and 
flower’s beauty for the generations yet unborn ? 
It is a hard task. Thirty-two varieties of birds are, we are 
told, in a fair w^ay to become extinct in the British Isles, and 
I met a man on the Coniston Fells a short time since, who had 
been employed by a market gardener somewhere in the midlands 
to cart off the third truck-load in the season of ferns, club moss, 
etc., for sale. The King Fern, or ro}?al fern, has ceased to exist 
in a valley that thirty years ago was full of it, and pari passu the 
flowers that dare to show their heads when the tourists flood 
the Lake district are disappearing. 
We are all of one mind as to the need of making and keep- 
ing England a land of gentlemen in the truest sense of the word. 
The gentle heart is what we desire to find the common 
possession of the people here in England, as much as we find it 
to be the characteristic of the Swiss peasantry, or, I was going 
