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eminence to a level with every mud-splasher who wilfully dashes along on the 
very verge of the path, hut every green oasis that formerly gladdened the eye is 
hedged off—every gate, surmounted with a formidable chevaux-de-frize , frowns 
upon the hopeful eye— 
“ Even the bare-worn common is denied”— 
and not a stile remains to offer a meditative lounge, which must now be sought, if 
at all, within those hallowed recesses where, thanks to legislative wisdom, you 
perceive you are “ Licensed to be drunk on the premises /” 
But “ what’s the use of sighing ?” I can have no hope to soften or macada¬ 
mize the heart of the obdurate road-surveyor. But there is another enemy that 
I may hope to touch, and that is the botanist himself. Whoever has sought for 
the rarer plants, as I have done, in the habitats mentioned in “ the books,” must 
have often with me have felt the pang of disappointment at finding no traces of 
the species in the designated localities ; and so much did this feeling operate upon 
the late Mr. Purton that, in his Midland Flora , he declared that no plants should 
appear unless observed by himself or some living authority he could depend upon. 
But the rapacity of even living collectors is unfortunately proverbial, and it often 
defeats itself. I have known young enthusiastic botanists, on being taken to the 
locality of a rare plant, rashly root up every one that could be found; so that 
either the species in question was actually eradicated there, or at any rate the habitat 
became “ unproductive” for some years to come. There was much good sense in the 
country dame I have heard of who incessantly and invariably aimed to impress upon 
all about her the maxim “ always keep an egg in the nest:” and this is equally appli¬ 
cable to botanical as to pecuniary affairs. If a rare plant, when found, is indiscri¬ 
minately gathered, without “ leaving an egg in the nest,” not only is the next 
botanist who may come to the spot disappointed, but it may be even imagined, 
and not altogether unjustly, that the plant in question w r as never really met with 
there, while even charity herself is compelled to suggest that “ some mistake” 
must have arisen. Hence my invariable custom is, where more than one plant 
presents itself, to “ leave an egg in the nest;” and I recommend this principle to 
my brother botanists. Of course, where specimens abound there can be no harm 
in “ making hay while the sun shines ;” and I shall now r , therefore, without fur¬ 
ther circumlocution, proceed to my herborizing avocations. 
Abergavenny is a good central position to radiate from into the surrounding 
the turnpike on the Tewkesbury road ; here I observed it for several successive years, till, 
in 1830, the fiat went forth, the road was widened and altered, and the plant lost. I have 
now in my herbarium a specimen of Verbascum virgatum which I gathered in 1828, growing 
by the side of the Kidderminster road, about two miles from Worcester; I again noticed it 
the following year, but the strictest search since has been unable to detect it. 
