The arrangement and nomenclature in the Catalogue and the 

 herbarium are identical and even the number of species for a 

 genus agrees in most cases. To my mind there is small doubt 

 that the herbarium now in the Museum forms the original col- 

 lection upon which Ravenel based his catalog. 



Although the life of Dr. Henry W. Ravenel is well known, 

 nevertheless a review of the main facts may not come amiss. 

 He was born May 19, 1814, in St. Johns Parish, Berkeley County, 

 South Carolina. After receiving his degree at the University 

 of South Carolina in 1832 he lived on his plantation, Pooshe, in 

 St. Johns until 1853 when he moved to Aiken to live with his 

 son. St. Johns, Berkeley, during the later forties was a center of 

 botanical research. Cranmore Wallace was collecting a herba- 

 rium; Francis Peyre Porcher was studying its flora from a medi- 

 cal view-point and published in 1847 his Medico-Botanical Cat- 

 alogue of the Plants and Ferns of St. Johns, Berkeley, South 

 Carolina; while Ravenel was not only in Thomas Walter's own 

 region gathering a collection of flowering plants equal in number 

 to those described in Walter's Flora Caroliniana, but was also 

 making an extensive study of the lower forms of plant life. 



Ravenel mdeed, is better known for his work with the fungi 

 than with higher forms. In 1853-60 he issued the rare Fungi 

 Caroliniani Exsiccati in five volumes, each volume containing 

 one hundred species of pressed and mounted fungi. Only thirty 

 sets were issued and the Museum is fortunate to own volume 

 1 of one of these sets through the generosity of Dr. C. W. Kollock. 

 From 1853 until his death Ravenel seems to have devoted him- 

 self largely to the study of fungi. From 1878 to 1882 he pub- 

 lished in collaboration with M. C. Cooke the Fungi Americani 

 Exsiccati, in eight volumes. He also gathered a large herbarium 

 of cryptogams which was sold to the British Museum in 1893. 

 A collection of flowering plants was sold to Converse College 

 some years later. The nature of this collection and its value as 

 compared with that in the Museum we hope to learn in the near 

 future. Botanists seem to know of the Converse College herb- 

 arium but of the valuable Santee Canal collection they have 

 remained in ignorance. Ravenel died at Aiken, July 17, 1887. 

 All in all he probably possessed a specific knowledge of more 



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