OF A LOCAL FLOEA. 
105 
for a inomeDt be considered compensation for tlie abhorrent and 
ruthless destruction of native rarities. It seems also that care 
for his own reputation should restrain the writer of a Flora from 
publishing exact stations for scarce plants. It has very 
curiously happened to a well-known botanist, that his accuracy 
has been impugned, because some habitats very precisely indicated 
in his County Flora no longer 3deld the plants with which they 
once abounded ; and disappointed searchers, not recognizing the 
mischievous result of proceedings like unto their own, were 
impolite enough to say that the records were erroneous. 
In field work some difficulties are to be encountered in the 
present day, arising from extended cultivation. 'I he plough is 
rapidly altering the surface features of the country. Heaths 
and commons are being enclosed, bogs and marshes reclaimed 
and drained. The extent of aboriginal wood and virgin sod is 
gradually diminishing. Thus it happens here and there, that a 
species has become extinct, through the removal of conditions 
necessary for its existence ; whilst many others increase in rarity, 
as man’s interference with the soil makes their position on it 
less tenable. Improved systems of farming, too, tend to destroy 
weeds of cultivation, and help to guard against plethora in the 
botanist’s vasculum. A friend writes, that he has this season 
been conscious of an undue predominance of bulls of a ferocious 
type in the pasture lands of his district. This certainly ranks 
as a practical difficulty. 
But there are advantages also by which the modern field 
botanist can largely profit. It is no longer necessary, as in the 
old days, to expend a fortune in becoming master of a science. 
Precise information in books can be had at very moderate 
expenditure, or may with ease be referred to in public institu- 
tions, where also good series of specimens are frequently to be 
found. Optical instruments are good and cheap. Railways 
have grown into a network of invaluable locomotive facilities, 
