A Wild Flower Census
Some years ago I found the library at Kew happy to accept and house a collection which my grandfather had made in his boyhood of the wild flowers about his home at Clapham. The incident caused me to reflect how poor a show I should make if challenged to provide a complete list of the wild flowers round my home. Since then each New Year's Eve I have resolved to take a census of them—and in each succeeding summer broken that resolution on the excuse that its fulfilment might well await less active years. Yet. I shall never feel myself an honest countryman till that task is done ; and I shall hope then to support my census with a decorative map. By way of a trial trip in mapping, an admirable draughtsman has already produced a handsome map which indicates the haunts, and is bordered by the portraits, of a dozen of the edible fungi that grow in our meadows. I like to imagine my house some day enriched by a flower-map and a bird-map of equal comeliness.
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