sing but not collecting. The mass of material gathered will 

 greatly increase the value of the Museum herbarium. 



Along with my study of plants I have tried to discover what 

 herbaria there are in the state and what botanical work is now 

 being done. I have visited a number of colleges and talked with 

 representatives of others. As far as I have been able to learn, 

 the Charleston Museum and Clemson College are the only insti- 

 tutions in the state that are doing any field work along l)otani- 

 cal lines. Several colleges have small collections of pressed 

 plants gathered solely for class use; the University of South 

 Carolina has four fascicles of Ravenel's Fungi Caroliniani Ex- 

 siccati; and Converse College is the fortunate possessor of a 

 large herbarium gathered by Dr. Henry W. Ravenel. 



This Converse College herbarium deserves particular descrip- 

 tion. A desire to examine and catalog it was one of the chief 

 factors in determining the nature of my summer work, but the 

 herbarium has never been taken from the wrappings in which 

 it was received at the time of purchase and the key to the lab- 

 oratory in which it is stored had been carried away by the pro- 

 fessor in charge. There being no duplicate or master keys at 

 Converse, it was not until the very day of my return to Charles- 

 ton that I was able to see the herbarium, Professor Hutchinson 

 having then brought back to Spartanburg the all important key. 

 Access to the herbarium once gained, difficulties vanished and 

 the cordial co-operation of Professor Hutchinson has made it 

 possible to arrange for the cataloging of the herbarium during 

 the next few months. This difficult piece of work has been in- 

 trusted to Miss Agnes Ravenel of Spartanburg. My examination 

 of the herbarium was necessarily superficial. I was able, how- 

 ever, to determine its general nature and its relation to the Rav- 

 enel herbarium of the Charleston Museum. Dr. Ravenel seems 

 to have made two collections of phenogamous plants. One, now 

 in the Charleston Museum, was collected in the vicinity of the 

 Santee Canal prior to 1850, and upon it was based Ravenel's 

 paper entitled Catalogue of the Natural Orders of Plants, in- 



55 



