But to meet the popular demand for a knowledge of the flora 

 of this section of the country the Museum has started a herbarium 

 which is to be devoted primarily to South Carolina species. 

 Specimens from outside the state are to be included in a so- 

 called general collection and used for purposes of comparison, 

 but for the next few years the botanical energies of the Museum 

 will be concentrated on building up the South Carolina collec- 

 tion. 



The nucleus of the South Carolina collection was found in a 

 mass of mouse-riddled, insect-eaten, dirt-worn, and moulded 

 material piled high in one of the galleries of the old Museum. 

 Once, perhaps, this formed a useful herbarium, but thirty 

 years of neglect had rendered much of it valueless and the 

 rest inaccessible to students. No one knew what it might con- 

 tain as no records had been preserved. With the assistance of 

 Mr. E. R. Memminger, honorary curator of fungi, the task of 

 sorting this material was begun late in the spring of 1911. By 

 the end of the year over a thousand cryptogams and about two 

 hundred flowering plants had been revised and accessioned. 

 Although very little work is being done at present among the 

 lower plants, some attention is being given to the ferns and Mr. 

 Memminger is preparing a catalog of the fungi of the state. 

 The principal work of the present year is among the flowering 

 plants, and the number of these in good order has been increased 

 to over fifteen hundred. More than two-thirds of these are 

 from South Carolina and represent approximately nine hundred 

 species. Less than a hundred and fifty specimens of recent date 

 have been included although several hundred collected near 

 Charleston during the last two years are ready to be added as 

 soon as labels can be written. 



Practically the entire South Carolina collection consists at 

 present of material recovered from the old herbaria. Among 

 these the collections of Dr. Henry W. Ravenel, Rev. Cranmore 

 Wallace, and Dr. Francis Peyre Porcher have proved the wheat 

 among the chaff. With a few exceptions they include all the 



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