44
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
vegetative parts, such as buds, aerial bulbils, leaflets, minute
fragments of the stem, rhizomes and even seedlings. Small
baby plants, the products of the gemmae of Malaxis, and some
floating seedlings of the Yellow Flag, are on the table.
I confine myself, however, strictly to the fruits and seeds
of our own flora, for when your President honoured me with
the request to read this paper he asked me to speak about their
collection and curating.
Seed dispersal must be divided into, a, the first-instance
dispersal, or the liberation of the seed from the parent plant ;
and b, its subsequent history ; both of which should be reflected
in the arrangement of the collection.
I use the word "seed" in the broad sense of the thing
normally sown, and similarly the word "fruit" must be inter-
preted as the mature ovary, plus any other structures that
persist and are concerned with dispersal.
The first-instance dispersal demands a great deal of thought
and care if the collection is to be as useful as possible, while
the same is true, although the requirements are not so exacting,
for the subsequent history : and for the purpose of study a
collection, although merely supplementary to observation in
the field and work at home, is quite indispensable. It helps very
greatly to explain matters to other people, it refreshes his own
memory whenever its possessor is at work on it, and without
it the difficulty of forming a true mental picture of the com-
parative modes of even a small group or genus is almost
insuperable.
Let me at once explain the division of the collection itself,
the object being to suggest the first-instance and the subsequent
dispersals separately. With this end in view, my own collection
is in four parts, as follow :—
1. The fruiting sprays that can be put into the herbarium
without damaging them, such as immature but well-
advanced indehiscent fruits, as well as pods and capsules
that are not quite ripe.
2. Spent dehiscent fruits which cannot be put there because
they would be crushed.
3. The seeds themselves.
4. I will say more about the fourth division later on : it
contains, for example, such things as spent fruiting axes,