192 Field Museum of Natural History — Reports, Vol. X 



including woods, was overhauled, and rearranged for more orderly 

 and economical storage. Typewritten labels were provided for 

 thousands of such specimens placed in storage, as well as for the 

 material accessioned. About 9,000 cards for the index files were 

 also prepared for the economic reference collections. The albums 

 of photographs which constitute the Department's key to the 

 botanical subjects in the Museum collection of negatives, were 

 brought up to date with numerous additions, and many of the old 

 volumes were reclassified and indexed. 



From the Division of Printing the Department received a large 

 quantity of buff labels for new exhibits, as well as for replacement 

 of a large proportion of the black labels which are being eliminated 

 as rapidly as possible from the exhibition halls. 



In continuation of the index of new species of American plants 

 there were added to the Museum's file 4,914 cards received from 

 the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. 



installations and rearrangements — botany 

 Various additions were made to the exhibits in the Hall of Plant 

 Life (Hall 29) during the year. One resulted from the receipt of a 

 fine Heliconia from Mexico, obtained near Veracruz by the well- 

 known botanical collector, Dr. C. A. Purpus, and subsequently 

 grown in the conservatory at Garfield Park. At maturity it was 

 sent by Mr. August Koch, chief florist of the conservatory, to the 

 Museum for determination. It proved to be a new, undescribed, 

 exceptionally handsome species of this tropical genus, which con- 

 stitutes the American branch of the otherwise Old World banana 

 family. In honor of the capable horticulturist under whose direction 

 Garfield Park Conservatory has become one of the finest institutions 

 of its kind in the United States, the new plant was named Heliconia 

 Kochiana. A reproduction of the plant was prepared for the exhibits 

 and placed in the case devoted to the banana family near the north 

 end of Hall 29, while the dried remains of the original have been 

 placed with the numerous other type specimens of tropical American 

 plants in the Herbarium. 



A branch of the jujube tree, an Asiatic buckthorn which produces 

 one of the important fruits of northern India and China, was received 

 through the courtesy of Professor Guy L. Philp, of the University 

 of California at Davis, California. Reproduced for the exhibits, 

 this fruiting branch illustrates the botanical characters of the 

 family to which it belongs, and serves as an example of a notable 

 Old World fruit tree which, despite its having been in cultivation 



