June 22, 1901. 
THE GARDENING. WORLD. 
683 
"Gardening i9 the prrest of human pleasures, and the greatest 
refreshment to the spirit of man "—Bacon. 
©Ije ©arittmttjj $lilnrla. 
Edited by J. FRASER, F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 
SATURDAY , JUNE 22 nd, iqox. 
The Editorial and Publishing Offices are 
now at 4, Dorset Buildings, Salisbury 
Square, Fleet St., London, E.C., where 
all communications and remittances are 
to be addressed to the Proprietors. 
NEXT WEEK'S ENGAGEMENTS. 
Wednesday, June 26th.—National Rose Society and Richmond 
Horticultural Society, at Richmond, Surrey. 
Saturday, June 29th.—Windsor and Eton Rose Show, in 
Eton College Grounds; Canterbury Rose Show. 
Wield Studies in Natural History.— 
* As in various other phases ot modern 
life, so in the teaching of natural history, 
whether it relates to plants or animals, any 
innovation is sure to meet with strenuous 
opposition, or by adverse criticism in the 
daily papers or otherwise. Something of 
this nature took place in some of the 
London dailies recently when it became 
known that the Technical Instruction Com¬ 
mittee of the Essex County Council had 
resolved to continue the special series of 
Saturday afternoon demonstrations on 
field botany, which were well attended by 
the teachers of the county last year. The 
alarm about the safety of our wild plants 
seemed to be caused more particularly by 
the proposed intention of taking a party of 
teachers to the New Forest during August 
next, for the purpose of studying plants in 
their natural habitats and other phases of 
natural history. In such a wide field as 
the New Forest, and at such a distance 
from the great hives of human industry the 
need for alarm seems groundless. 
There are other causes at work nearer 
home which seem to call for the special 
attention of the local authorities for the pre¬ 
servation of wild plants, rare or otherwise. 
Where a large, resident population exists, 
the wild plants are disappearing at an 
alarming rate. Old and young children 
collect large handfuls of plants quite irre¬ 
spective of their being rare or common, and 
throw them away, perhaps, before they 
have gone many hundred yards, after the 
supposed pleasure of pulling them up has 
given place to a sense of trouble in carrying 
them. No doubt much of this is done 
thoughtlessly and in ignorance of curtailing 
the pleasure of looking at them in after lite. 
Here then is a real reason why the educa¬ 
tion of the masses in infancy would be a 
real benefit to the community at large ; and 
as time goes on this will become more 
urgently necessary. Nature study has now 
been recognised by the Board of Education 
as a subject for the intellectual training of 
children in rural elementary schools, and 
none too soon we think, for those who are 
educated or come to have a real knowledge 
of plants come to love and respect them, 
rather than to pull them up thoughtlessly. 
In the neighbourhood of large towns it 
does happen that the open spaces get more 
or less denuded of vegetation owing to the 
excessive traffic upon them,the games played 
upon them for the purpose of recreation, and 
owing to the deleterious substances de¬ 
posited upon the same by a filthy, smoky 
atmosphere, and the proximity to chemical 
works and other industries. Under these 
circumstances it becomes necessary to break 
up the surface and endeavour to re-establish 
a fresh sward. There are large stretches of 
commons, however, where the natural vege¬ 
tation is disappearing owing to the improve¬ 
ments effected on the surface by levelling 
and otherwise in order to fit them as places 
of recreation where games of various kinds 
may be carried on. Worse than that a 
large amount of rubbish, road sweepings 
and scrapings, mud, &c., has to be got rid 
of and all this foreign material gets dumped 
upon some of the pieces of common land 
for the purpose of levelling it probably. 
The result is that all the native vegetation 
disappears and bad weeds such as Wall 
Barley, Docks, various species of Atriplex, 
Chenopodium, and other things take the 
place of interesting wild plants which be¬ 
come extinct, probably never to re-appear 
on the same ground, because its constitution 
has been altered. 
Verily the field studies above mentioned 
ought to be of far more reaching service to 
the community at large than to teachers 
and gardeners. The latter, we cpine, would 
derive benefit from the scheme if it were 
generally adopted so as to give them a know¬ 
ledge of plants, however elementary, in the 
earlier stages of their school days. In order 
to carry this out it would be necessary to 
commence educating the young teachers 
first so that a knowledge of the subject could 
be more generally disseminated over the 
land. A knowledge and love for plants, 
their associations and relations to birds, 
beasts and insects could not fail to be of 
service to gardeners in after life, whether 
engaged in a public or private capacity or 
commercially. A liberal education in these 
matters need not prevent the student in 
after life from being a good workman, 
gardener or nurseryman. We have evidence 
to the contrary in people who have been 
successful in these various capacities, and 
who have been close students of nature all 
their days from childhood onwards. All 
things considered we think that a widely 
diffused knowledge of plant life, with pro¬ 
per instruction to the rising generation, 
would tend to the preservation not merely 
of rare plants, but of those that are yet re¬ 
latively common. 
As to the criticism to which we referred 
above it seems to have been merely the 
echo of a cry or hasty and needless alarm, 
from Leeds to London and from London to 
Leeds. Professor L. C. Miall, of the York¬ 
shire College, Leeds, wrote a letter to the 
Editor of The Times, in which he says, 
“ One leading feature is a vacation course 
of ten days in the New Forest. The 
teachers are to be accompanied by local 
guides, and their attention is particularly 
directed to the rarest species, which are 
specially named, as well as the places in 
which they are known to grow.” Further 
on he says, “ It seems to me lamentable 
that teachers should be advised to study 
natural history by schedules, and to gather 
plants merely in order to name and dry 
them. I imagine that they will be worse and 
not better for working through so dry and 
barren a course.” We are very much sur¬ 
prised that the professor should discount 
this method of gaining information, for we 
consider properly dried and preserved 
specimens a perpetual object lesson and a 
means whereby the student can get familiar¬ 
ised with the intricacies of plant forms which 
the overburdened memory would forget in 
the course of a single day’s ramble. He 
seems to object to the students acquiring a 
knowledge of common plants as well as rare 
when he ridicules the idea of their paying 
“ particular attention to the difficult and 
uncertain sub-species of the common 
Bramble.” As to its being a dry and barren 
study, we have never learned that Linnaeus 
considered it so, and from his day to the 
present there is ample evidence that his dis¬ 
ciples and admirers have followed the pur¬ 
suit with a zeal and enthusiasm that afford 
ample testimony to the contrary. In refer¬ 
ence to the hurrying and uprooting of rare 
specimens the professor has evidently not 
read the programme carefully, for as E. M. 
Buxton, Esq., Chairman of Committee for 
Technical Instruction in Essex, points out, 
the following words are printed in conspicu¬ 
ous leaded type :—“ Members of the party 
will, of course, refrain from uprooting ‘ rare ’ 
or ‘ scarce ’ specimens.” Furthermore, we 
learn that the Rev. J. E. Kelsall, the local 
representative of the “ Selborne Society,” 
who is a staunch advocate for the preserva¬ 
tion of plant and bird life in the New 
Forest, is to extend his hospitality to the 
party and accompany them on several of 
their rambles, and this after full assurance 
that none of the rarer specimens were to be 
disturbed. The professor’s arguments fall 
to the ground in the light of these declara¬ 
tions. 
A leader writer in The Times on June 5th 
said, “ In other countries—in Switzerland 
particularly—legislative measures have 
been adopted to protect the native flora 
against extirpation by unthinking touvsits." 
The italics are ours, and we agree with the 
statement entirely. Plants, indeed, require 
protection against the unthinking and un¬ 
educated raiders of the same, who are never 
satisfied unless they are pulling up some¬ 
thing, whether they really require it or not. 
As to the “ study of natural history by 
schedules ” we consider it a very proper 
thing to do. The very aim and object of a 
teacher is or should be to direct the student, 
who might otherwise waddle through the 
course aimlessly and without an object in 
view. The object aimed at in the schedule 
is “ an insight into the way in which plants 
grow, especially in their relations with their 
environment—the influence of external con¬ 
ditions, such as light, heat, and moisture, 
upon their form, the mutual relationships 
between plants and animals, and the influ¬ 
ence of one organism upon another.” No 
raiding of rare plants is necessary to accom¬ 
plish this. The plants may be quite com¬ 
mon in the districts visited, dependent upon 
the geological formation of the same and 
their environment. The raiding of rare 
plants with this object in view is quite un¬ 
necessary. Plant, bird, beast, insect and 
other object may be studied in their native 
homes, without being disturbed or materi¬ 
ally injured in any way and left there, the 
desired information being committed to the 
flouted schedules and brought away in the 
pocket. Again, the programme in specialis¬ 
ing the lines of study shows that though 
plant life is to be the main object of study 
it creates a need for calling in the aid of 
the sister sciences, such as physical geo¬ 
graphy, geology, entomology, fungology, 
zoology and every other science which has 
a bearing the one upon the other directly 
or indirectly. Some criticism was also 
passed upon the intimation that the services 
of local guides were to be requisitioned. 
The names and addresses of the guides in 
question referred to the Saturday afternoon 
rambles in Essex, and not to the New 
Forest, Hampshire, at all. The duplicates 
of plants to be used for special fascicles 
also referred to the rambles in Essex ; and 
the suggestion was that rural teachers might 
collect theplantsof their own districts for the 
purpose of school instruction. These plants 
might represent cornfield weeds, meadow 
plants, &c., and provide object lessons 
showing the difference between useful and 
useless plants of cultivated land or meadow 
pastures, which we should consider a very 
useful study in rural districts. 
henological Observations. —We merely 
return to the subject of our remarks 
in last week’s issue in order to state that 
