NATURE NOTES 
190 
One of the main difficulties here, as also to a great extent in 
the case of the Wild Birds Protection Act, is to get the 
occupiers of land to prosecute. In Devonshire the energetic 
Association has roused their county to a sense of the danger 
to their pockets by the simple syllogism that the well-being of 
the county depends upon tourists ; tourists come to see the 
natural beauties of the county, and, therefore, with the destruc- 
tion of these beauties the prosperity of every hotel or town is 
imperilled. There, too, the hearty co-operation not only of the 
magistracy but also of the police has been secured. It may 
prove difficult to rouse this sense of danger or to secure this 
co-operation elsewhere. 
The attention of Lord Avebury, President of the Selborne 
Society, having been directed to the matter, opinions w’ere 
collected as to the desirability or practicability of fresh legisla- 
tion on the subject. Did we follow the lead of Switzerland and 
Italy as to their rarer alpine plants, this would mean the 
scheduling of species — in which the Wild Birds Act affords a 
precedent which is almost tantamount to a warning how not to 
do it. Magistrates would, I think, be reluctant to convict a 
man for gathering, say, Thlaspi pcyfoliatmi or Gladiolus illyricus if 
he protested that he thought that the one was chickweed, or 
that he was gathering the other as Digitalis for the herb- 
doctors. 
A more practical suggestion, I think, is that which I have 
received from Mrs. Lemon, the Hon. Secretary of the Society 
for the Protection of Birds, which is that we might have pro- 
tected areas — areas in which all plants might be protected — and 
that those properties which are in the hands of the National 
Trust might be the first to be so declared. This seems to me 
to be quite feasible, whilst, as the National Trust estates are 
at present but small, I would suggest that some landowners 
might, by notices, make their estates equally protected areas, 
merely, that is, announcing their intention — under the existing 
law — to prosecute depredators. 
Any Iresh legislation would seem to me, therefore, to be only 
a little less unnecessary than it would be difficult. 
G. S. Boulger, F.L.S. 
PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION OF PLANTS. 
[Reprinted, hy permission, from the “ South-Eastern 
Naturalist,” 1902.] 
T will be recognised on all hands that it is inevitable 
in the course of progress of any civilised and settled 
country that, unless special steps are taken to prevent 
it, extermination must await, either by accident or by 
deliberation, those plants which are less easily adaptable to any 
new environment into which they are thrown. The sole reason 
