The Herbarium - Collecting

A short Victorian handbook on making a herbarium of your own: where to look, what to gather, how to press and mount what you find, and how to arrange the finished sheets.

The naturalist Harland Coultas, who died in 1877, wrote for readers who wanted to work outdoors rather than in a laboratory. The Herbarium brings together the botanical chapters of his The Home Naturalist, issued in London in the 1870s, and sets out the whole business of a private collection: where and when to find specimens, how to dry and mount them without spoiling colour or shape, how to name what you have, and how to order the sheets by the natural system of botany. A closing chapter takes up the flowerless plants - the ferns, mosses and lichens that most beginners guides leave out.

Coultas spent his working life explaining plants to people with no scientific training, in books such as What May Be Learned from a Tree. His instructions are simple enough for a first attempt and exact enough to produce a collection that is still worth opening a lifetime later.

This edition features:

• Guidance on where and when to look for specimens, and how to carry them home undamaged
• A full account of pressing, drying and mounting, the stage that decides whether a collection lasts
• Directions for naming your finds and ordering the sheets by the natural system of botany
• A separate chapter on the flowerless plants, from ferns and mosses through to lichens
• An illustrated edition of a hard-to-find handbook written for the home naturalist working alone