THE PI^ANT WORLD 155 



Editorial. 



The deposition by Professor Edward L. Greene, late of the Catholic 

 University, of his entire herbarium of 20,000 specimens at the National 

 Museum serves to emphasize the importance of placing these valuable 

 private collections in the custody of some public institution. Aside from 

 the immense benefit thereby secured to students, there is the practical 

 consideration of safety for the collection, and the destruction by fire of 

 one of the most valuable private herbaria in America a few years ago 

 affords a good instance of a loss that might have been avoided by a timely 

 disposition of the specimens in fireproof quarters. 



We take this occasion also to call attention to the uses of the National 

 Herbarium as an aid to the solution of economic problems in agriculture, 

 horticulture, etc. There are many who fail persistently to appreciate the 

 necessity of maintaining a government bureau devoted, like the Museum, 

 to investigations in pure science. This unfortunate misconception has 

 gained ground in Congress, and the result has been that all appropria- 

 tions for the purchase of specimens by the Museum during the coming 

 fiscal year have been withheld. Many standard collections, therefore, 

 will go to other institutions, and there will be a gap in the historical ac- 

 cumulation of material in the National Herbarium. 



It requires no technical knowlege and very slight consideration of the 

 subject to appreciate the folly of this attitude and its harmful reaction on 

 the progress of the various scientific departments of the government. A 

 herbarium is the working library of the botanist, and in some form or 

 other it is essential to the specialist in any branch of the subject. Not 

 only is it used for the purposes of identification, the study of relationships 

 between wild and cultivated plants, useless weeds and valuable drugs, 

 etc., but it affords authentic material of recognized species for dissection 

 or laboratory culture. Without its extensive seed collection, supple- 

 mented by the complete specimens in the National Herbarium, the seed 

 laboratory of the Department of Agriculture would have been unable to 

 carry out its important work of the last few years for the farmers in the 

 matter of securing pure seeds. So also the study of forage and other 

 economic grasses is absolutely dependent upon the presence of a large and 

 full collection of grasses not only of this country but of the world. 



It is possible that Congress has been influenced in its action in this 

 matter by the fact that the Museum is soon to have a new building ; and 

 we may hope that full justice will then be done in the matter of appro- 

 priations not only for the purchase of material but for the purpose of ex- 

 plorations and the salaries of an adequate number of assistants. We trust 

 that those who are enlightened as to the value and importance of the gov- 

 ernment collections will keep this matter before the public and before 

 Congress. 



