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Biological studies and practical interests alike make new demands upon systematic botany. Species are not only the subject-material of herbaria and collections, but they are living entities, and their life-history and life-conditions command a gradually increasing interest.
A folk-song sung by one of the people in the open air is an Alpine rose, upon the very Alps the Alpine horns are nothing but herbaria the soul of the national consciousness." But I said I did not know anything fine enough to sing to such great people.
When Lindley wrote his "Genera and Species" in 1836, three species of Masdevallias only were known to botanists but twenty-five years later, when he prepared his "Folio Orchidaceae," nearly forty species were; known in herbaria, and to-day perhaps fully a hundred kinds are grown in our gardens, while travelers tell us of all the gorgeous beauties which are known to exist high up on the cloud-swept sides of the Andes and Cordilleras of the New World.
Our flora is beautiful, varied, and possesses many rare plants, yet I only know of two herbaria; the birds are abundant, yet there is but one collector of them; and as for insects, although I frequently take what I consider rare species, yet I cannot find an entomologist in the whole district, or I would send them to him.
Duplicates from the Herbarium at Kew Gardens and from several of the more famous European herbaria are to be found here, as well as numerous specimens from the botanical institutions of the British Colonies.
So that vast herbaria, into which contributions from every source have flowed for years, furnish the best possible data at least are far better than any practicable amount of personal herborization or the comparative study of related forms occurring over wide tracts of territory. But as the materials increase, so do the difficulties.
It is quite otherwise with those which are represented in our herbaria by single or few specimens. These are provisional species species which may hereafter fall to the rank of simple varieties. I have not been inclined to prejudge such questions; indeed, in this regard, I am not disposed to follow those authors whose tendency is, as they say, to reunite species.
"Eorundem Expositio." MS. in Bodleian. "Antidotarium." MS. in Caius College. To these he adds, on the authority of Bale and Pits: 7. "De Viribus Aquarum et Specierum." "De Proportione Fistularum." "De Judicio Patientis." "De Re Herbaria." "De Tuenda Valentudine." "De Particularibus Morbis." "Thesaurus Pauperum." All of these latter may be regarded as doubtful.
Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other, M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens.
Life is so much more tremendous a thing in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that all records of human experience are as so many bound herbaria to the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies.
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