Bulletin - United States National Museum - Smithsonian Institution

18 FLORA OF WASHINGTON AND VICINITY.
to cultivation he instinctively denounces as acts of vandalism. In him,
more than in any other class of mankind, the poet's injunction,
Woodman, sjiare tliat tree,"
touches a responsive chord. While all this may seem as absurd to some
as does the withholding from tillage of great pleasure-grounds in the
form of hunting-parks for the lauded sporting gentry of Northern and
Western Europe, still, when these parts of the world are compared with
the artificially made deserts of Southeastern Europe and Western Asia,
caused by the absence of such sentiments, there may perhaps be dimly
recognized a " soul of good in things evil," if not a soul of wisdom in
things ridiculous.
After the protracted subjection of a country to the conditions of
civilization it gradually comes about that while the greater part of the
surface falls under cultivation, more or less thorough, and the botanist
is ultimately excluded from it, there will remain a few favored spots
which from one cause or another will escape and continue to form his
favorite haunts. In the vicinity of large rivers, giving greater variety
to the surface, or of rugged hills or mountains, this will be especially
the case. As a country grows old, large estates in the vicinity of cities
fall into the possession of heirs who are engaged in mercantile or pro-
fessional business and neglect them, or they come into litigation, lasting
for years, and are thus hapj»ily abandoned to iSTature. These and otlier
causes have operated in an especial manner in the surroundings of
Washington, and there thus exist a large number of these green oases,
as it were, interspersed over the otherwise botanical desert.
In consequence of this fact it requires experience in order to improve
the facilities which the place affords. A botanist unacquainted with
the proper localities for successful collection might spend a month almost
in vain and depart with the conviction that there was nothing here to
be found. lb nuxy not be wholly peculiar, but these favored localities
are here often of very limited extent and in situations which from a dis-
tance afford no attraction to the collector. Civilization is, however,
very perceptibly encroaching upon many of them, and it is feared that
in another half century little will be left but a few bare rocks or inac-
cessible marshes.
In naming localities the principal authorities relied upon are: 1, a
recent Atlas of fifteen miles around Washington, including the County of
Montgomery, Md., Compiled, Brawn, and Published from Actual S2ir'veys,
by G. M. Uoplcins, G. E. Fhiladelphia, 1879; and 2, a military map