16 
the surest means not only of keeping alive 
a popular interest in the habits and 
pecularities and beauties of the flora of our 
Dominion, but, what is more important still, 
of actually preserving from extinction some 
of the species. It would be idle to under- 
rate the importance of the herbarium, 
wherein dried specimens of plants may be 
preserved even for centuries, and thus be the 
means of solving doubts that arise from 
time to time in the effort to determine the 
species—or even the genus, it may be—to 
which a plant belongs; but it can with 
even greater force be claimed that the pre- 
servation of living examples of all our 
beautiful and intensely interesting plants 
is of infinitely greater importance. Thus it 
is that the scientific botanist who is at the 
same time a diligent collector, who centres 
his interest equally in the growth of his 
plants as in his scientific description of their 
varied forms and habits, is a vastly more 
useful botanist than his colleague in the 
great botanical field who confines himself 
strictly to the scientific side of the work. 
It has been amply shown that the advance 
of settlement has in many ways endangered 
the preservation of many species of our 
native flora, and it is well, therefore, that 
we have among us many men who, though 
they have had no special scientific training— 
some, indeed, who have not had any educa- 
tional advantages beyond those of the 
ordinary primary schools—yet have im- 
planted in their nature a love of the herbs. 
the shrubs and the forest trees with 
which this land is so bountifully endowed. 
It is to these industrious and persevering 
collectors, who think no trouble too much, 
no physical exertion too great, no sacrifice 
of time to be regretted, in their praise- 
worthy efforts to secure specimens of our 
rarer plants, who are entitled to the 
warmest thanks of the community at large 
for their valuable work. It is in their 
gardens and grounds alone where anything 
like representative collections of the native 
Hora can be seen. 
And the knowledge of this raises the 
question whether this field of useful activity 
should not be occupied to a greater extent 
than it has been in the past by those who 
