I 22 
NATURE NOTES 
influence of one organism upon another.” It is also only fair 
to add that in a conspicuous place in the programme appears 
the caution, “ Members of the party will of course refrain from 
uprooting rare or scarce specimens.” At the same time we 
cannot but think that Nature-study might be as well studied in 
Essex as in the New Forest; that collecting of any kind is no 
essential part of the study ; that rare plants are no better than 
common ones for the study of botany ; that it is, to say the least, 
most indiscreet to direct the attention of a large class of be- 
ginners to the precise localities of such rarities, especially by a 
printed circular ; and that, even if no harm results in the present 
case, a dangerous precedent has been set to other teaching 
bodies. The Committee would be wise, we think, to cancel 
the programme in its present form. The following amusing 
verses have appeared on the subject in the Westminster Gazette : — 
In Technical Studies an ebb time and flood is. 
So Essex has started — though late in the day — 
On the pathway of learning. Her students are yearning 
To cut all our wild flowers, and turn them to hay. 
They’ve here led their classes — professors in glasses. 
Established in lodgings, they threaten to stay. 
Lest some plant that rare is, become mere vulgaris. 
The flowers of the forest they’ll clear clean away. 
Ah, loud now our wail is for thee, cesiivalis 
Spiranthes. No blossom unfolds with the day. 
Near Lyndhurst they spied thee ; they cut thee, they dried thee. 
The flowers of the forest are all stolen away I 
Thy flowers, Calycinum, they pluck them and twine ’em 
With damp Humifusum. They found them near Sway. 
The bright Pyrus mains next springtime must fail us. 
The flowers of the forest are all stolen away ! 
Wherever there grows a Lastrea spinnlosa 
Filix-mas, dilatata — Next Bank Holiday 
Essex ’Enry and ’Arriet shall cut and shall carry it. 
The flowers of the forest are all stolen away ! 
Badger-Lifting. — A Mr. Lush having written to The 
Standard boasting of his prowess in killing eight or ten badgers 
per annum, the following excellent article appeared in that 
paper : — 
A correspondent in Gloucestershire sends us an account, in a letter which we 
print elsewhere, of the great success which he and his friends have lately met 
with in the pursuit of the badger. Gloucestershire is one of the English Counties 
in which these animals have hitherto contrived to maintain themselves in con- 
siderable numbers — but that is not the fault of our correspondent and his friends. 
In all the Western Counties — Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset — they are com- 
paratively plentiful, and in Wales and along the Welsh border they hold their 
own. Standish Park, in Gloucestershire, is not very far from the Forest of Dean 
on the Welsh frontier ; and the forest must afford the badgers much excellent 
cover. They were to be found forty years ago in Stow Wood, near Oxford. In 
the West of Ireland they are reported to be still abundant. The badger, says 
Mr. Pease, in his little monograph published three years ago, “ has made a 
wonderful struggle for existence.” But he believes him to be doomed. The 
gamekeepers’ edict has gone forth against him ; he is classed as “vermin,” and 
is disappearing with the polecat, the marten, the wild cat, the nobler kind of 
