OUR VANISHING WILDFLOWERS, and other Essays. By Henry S. Salt. With an Afterword by Sir Maurice Abbot-Anderson, C.V.O., 86 pp. Watts.
Mr. Salt has expanded into an attractive little volume papers which have appeared in The Times and elsewhere on various aspects of the British flora. He deals especially with the need for preventing the extermination of threatened species, and after analysing in a practical spirit the difficulties of prompting and enforcing such further protective legislation as already exists in some other countries, urges the need for “a Wildflowers Preservation Society, or, failing that, a joint committee of the already existing organisations concerned with natural scenery, which would make it its special business to keep these questions before the public, and so to prepare the way for legislation.” The same line of advance is urged, in the “afterword,” by Sir Maurice Abbot-Anderson, who deprecates the formation of a new society on the lines of those existing, but recommends the formation of a popular League for the Protection of our Wildflowers, to enlist public support, especially among school children, with the help of an emblem or badge. In persistent propaganda undoubtedly lies the best hope of success, for it is useless to attempt legislation too far ahead of public sentiment. The author draws attention to the mischief done by an excess of private collections, and by organized exchange clubs. His love for flowers extends to the commoner species—even to the docks and goosefoots—and he discusses varied aspects of plant life and its study with distinction and wit.
Times Literary Supplement, June 28, 1928, p. 490