Collecting Flowers
Source:
What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games And Pastimes
Category:
IN THE COUNTRY
A quieter pastime, but a very interesting one, and also one that,
unlike egg-collecting and butterfly-collecting, goes on all the year
round, is collecting flowers. For this purpose tin cases are made,
with straps to hold them from the shoulders, in which to keep the
plants cool and fresh; but there is no need to wait for the possession
of one of these. An ordinary box or basket will, if you have not very
far to walk, serve equally well. You will also need a press, which can
be simply a couple of boards about a foot long and six inches wide,
with a good supply of blotting-paper between. The flowers are pressed
by spreading them very carefully, to show their beauty to best
advantage, between the blotting-paper, and then piling a few books on
the boards. The weight need not be very heavy and the blotting-paper
should frequently be renewed. You will soon learn how long the
pressing need continue, but it is of the highest importance that the
flowers are thoroughly dried before you mount them in your album or on
separate sheets of paper. The simplest form of mounting is to glue
little strips of paper here and there across the stems. A botanical
collection is more valuable if the roots of the plants are also
included; and this will make it necessary for you to have a long
trowel. For the collector of flowers a handbook is compulsory. Such a
book as Alice Lounsberry's The Wild Flower Book for Young People
gives many details of the growth and nature of plants, told with a
story that makes the book unusually interesting, and will arouse your
enthusiasm to gather wild flowers and see how large a collection of
them you can make.
It is interesting, if you have any skill in painting, to make
water-color copies of all the flowers that you find; another good
occupation for wet days in the country.
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Butterflies
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