1 22 
NATURE NOTES. 
Ray Society. In reply I am desired by the Council to express 
their thanks for the opportunity of inspecting these most careful 
illustrations.” 
Besides these written expressions of approval, I may add 
when Mr. Stacy Marks saw Miss Murray’s paintings he de- 
clared that for fidelity to Nature and accuracy, they might be 
compared to those of Albert Diirer. Personally, I wish that I 
could persuade the public that such faithful work as this and 
much that is to be found in the Arts and Crafts Exhibitions, 
and amongst the so-called “sketches” by young artists, made 
from the love of painting, is worth buying and that the same 
amount of money spent in the purchase of gaudy daubs pro- 
duced by people whose attainments are on the level of those 
of the pavement artist in chalks — is absolutely frittered awa}' 
njuriously. 
If there were no market for daubs, the daubers would be 
forced to obtain subsistence by honest work and the skilled 
artists would have a better reward for their painful labour and 
the public would gain by an investment in works of art, although 
they may be only fans and screens, rather than lose by the 
possession of trash. 
George A. Musgrave. 
Furzebank, Torquay. 
THE PLANT ALLUSIONS IN THE POEMS OF 
ROBERT HERRICK. 
B HUMBLE lover of Nature and an earnest Selbornian, 
I have found much pleasure and profit in reading the 
admirable essay by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, 
which has lately appeared in the pages of Nature 
Notes, upon the allusions to plants which occur in the poems 
of Matthew Arnold. I think it will be found that the writings 
of Robert Herrick are fuller of references to plants, and espe- 
cially to flowers, than are those of any other English poet. May 
I be allowed to draw the attention of my fellow Selbornians to 
some of the beautiful passages in which these references occur ? 
Herrick belonged to a Leicestershire family, and he was born 
in the year 1591. He graduated in arts at Cambridge, and in 
the year 1629 he took holy orders in the Church of England, 
and was appointed soon afterwards to the vicariate of Dean 
Prior, a quiet little rural village on the borders of Dartmoor, 
in what he called “ his dull Devonshire.” Herrick, when he 
was fifty-six years old, in the year 1647, when the unfortunate 
King Charles and his cavaliers were defending the royal crown 
of England against the pikes of the Puritans, printed in Lon- 
don the first of the two sections of his poems, made up of his 
“ pious pieces,” under the title of “Noble Numbers.” In the 
