FORMATION AND ARRANGING OF A HERBARIUM. 
71 
but yet ail instant of delay may be tbe loss of a whole year for bo¬ 
tany. My design is to state bow any one may prepare, dry, ar¬ 
range, and preserve specimens of plants in such a manner as that 
they may be easily known and determined. This distinguishes the 
true botanist from the mere herbarist or nomenclator. In a word, I 
propose to form a Hortus Siccus which we call a collection of dried 
plants, serving to put us in mind of the plants we have once known, 
though it gives us a poor idea of those we have never seen before. 
First, it will be necessary to provide a quantity of gray paper, 
and nearly as much of white, of the same size, and pretty strong, 
without which the specimens would rot in the gray paper, the plants 
or the flowers would lose their colour, by which they are most usu¬ 
ally known, and which is most pleasant to behold in the collection. 
A press must also be prepared, and when these preparations are 
made, the following rules may be observed, in order to prepare the 
specimens, so as to preserve and know them again. 
The precise time to gather the specimens is when they are in full 
flower, or rather when some of the flowers are fallen, to give place to 
the fruit. It is at the time when all the parts of fructification are 
visible that endeavours must be made to gather and dry the plant. 
Small plants may be taken whole with their roots, which must be 
so brushed that no earth remains. If the earth be wet, it must either 
be dried in order to be brushed, or else washed oil'. In this case, it 
should be well wiped, and dried before it is put in the papers, with¬ 
out which it would infallibly rot, and injure those near to it. The 
root need not be preserved, unless the plant be small, as the Salix 
herbacea, or unless it have some remarkable singularities. Nature, 
which has done so much for elegance and ornament in the form and 
colour of plants, in whatever strikes our sight, has destined the roots 
entirely to useful functions, being concealed within the earth. To 
have given them an agreeable structure, would have been to hide a 
light under a measure. 
Trees, and all great plants, can only be had by small specimens, 
but then the specimens should be well chosen, and so as to contain 
all the constituent parts of the genus and species necessary to know 
and determine the plant from whence it is taken. It is not sufficient 
that all the parts of the fructification are distinguishable, though these 
would be enough to distinguish the genus, the characters of the foli¬ 
ation and ramification must be sufficiently visible to determine the 
species of the said genus, which are nearly alike in flower and fruit. 
If the branches be too thick, they may be made thinner by cutting 
them nicely with a sharp knife underneath, as much as may be with- 
