!

And now, boy reader, in all seriousness I shall tell you what I mean by
a "plant-hunter." I mean a person who devotes all his time and labour
to the collection of rare plants and flowers--in short, one who makes
this occupation his _profession_. These are not simply "botanists"--
though botanical knowledge they must needs possess--but, rather, what
has hitherto been termed "botanical collectors."

Though these men may not stand high in the eyes of the scientific
world--though the closet-systematist may affect to underrate their
calling, I dare boldly affirm that the humblest of their class has done
more service to the human race than even the great Linnaeus himself.
They are, indeed, the botanists of true value, who have not only
imparted to us a knowledge of the world's vegetation, but have brought
its rarest forms before our very eyes--have placed its brightest flowers
under our very noses, as it were--flowers, that but for them had been
still "blushing unseen," and "wasting their sweetness on the desert
air."

My young reader, do not imagine that I have any desire to underrate the
merits of the scientific botanist. No, nothing of the sort. I am only
desirous of bringing into the foreground a class of men whose services
in my opinion the world has not yet sufficiently acknowledged--I mean
the botanical collectors--the _plant-hunters_.

It is just possible that you never dreamt of the existence of such a
profession or calling, and yet from the earliest historic times there
have been men who followed it. There were plant-collectors in the days
of Pliny, who furnished the gardens of Herculaneum and Pompeii; there
were plant-collectors employed by the wealthy mandarins of China, by the
royal sybarites of Delhi and Cashmere, at a time when our semi-barbarous
ancestors were contented with the wild flowers of their native woods.
But even in England the calling of the plant-hunter is far from being
one of recent origin. It dates as early as the discovery and
colonisation of America; and the names of the Tradescants, the Bartrams,
and the Catesbys--true plant-hunters--are among the most respected in
the botanical world. To them we are indebted for our tulip-trees, our
magnolias, our maples, our robinias, our western _platanus_, and a host
of other noble trees, that already share the forest, and contest with
our native species, the right to our soil.

At no period of the world has the number of plant-hunters been