And so, on snobbish Primrose Day, We envy Peter's simple lore: A primrose, worn with fulsome fuss, A yellow primrose is to us, Alas! and something more. The nurseryman and the professional gardener have also much to answer for in the destruction of wildflowers. Take the following instance, quoted from the _Flora of Kent_, with reference to the cyclamen: "Towards the end of August, 1861, I was shown the native station of this plant. . . . The people in those parts had found out it was in request, and had almost entirely extirpated it, digging up the roots, and selling them for transplantation into shrubberies." In the same work it is recorded that, when the frog orchis was found in some abundance near Canterbury, "in a wonderfully short space of time the whole of this charming colony was dug and extirpated." Again, if it be permissible to call a spade a spade, what shall be said of those roving knights of the trowel, the unconscionable rock-gardeners who ride abroad in search of some new specimen for their collections? A late writer of very charming books on the subject has feelingly described how, after the discovery of some long-sought treasure, he craved a brief spell of repose, a sort of holy calm, before commencing operations. "We blessed ones," he said, referring to botanists as contrasted with ornithologists, "may sit down calmly, philosophically, beside our success, and gently savour all its sweetness, until it is time to take out the trowel after half an hour of restful rapture in our laurels."[9] [Footnote 9: From _My Rock Garden_, by Reginald Farrer, p. 257.] Other flower-fanciers there are who show much less circumspection. In Upper Teesdale, where the rare blue gentian (_gentiana verna_) is found on the upland pastures, I was told that a "gentleman" had come with two gardeners in a motor, and departed laden with a number of these beautiful Alpine flowers for transplantation to his private rockery. The nation which permits such a theft--far worse than stealing from a private garden--deserves to possess no wildflowers at all; and such a botanist, if botanist he can be called, deserves to be himself transplanted, or transported--to Botany Bay.