This
nothing can supply but the autopsy or view of the object itself. Hence
the advantage of being able to see plants at pleasure, by forming dried
collections of them, in what are called herbariums.
A good practical botanist, Sir J.E. Smith observes, must be educated
among the wild scenes of nature, while a finished theoretical one
requires the additional assistance of gardens and books, to which must
be superadded the frequent use of a good herbarium. When plants are well
dried, the original forms and positions of even their minutest parts,
though not their colours, may at any time be restored by immersion in
hot water. By this means the productions of the most distant and various
countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together
at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted
with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of
the whole vegetable world in a state of nature, could excel such a store
of information.
With regard to the mode or state in which plants are preserved,
desiccation, accompanied by pressing, is the most generally used. Some
persons, Sir J.E. Smith observes, recommend the preservation of
specimens in weak spirits of wine, and this mode is by far the most
eligible for such as are very juicy: but it totally destroys their
colours, and often renders their parts less fit for examination than by
the process of drying.
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