AN HERBARIUM. 38? 



have always before our eyes the very object which 

 was under his inspection. We have similar indica- 

 tions of the plants described in his subsequent works, 

 the herbarium being most defective in those of his 2d 

 Ma7itissa, his least accurate publication. We often 

 find remarks there, made from specimens acquired 

 after the Species Plantarum was published. These 

 the herbarium occasionally shows to be of a different 

 species from the original one, and it thus enables us 

 to correct such errors. 



The specimens thus pasted, are conveniently kept 

 in lockers, or on the shelves of a proper cabinet. Lin- 

 naeus in the Philosophia Botan'ica exhibits a figure of 

 one, divided into appropriate spaces for each class, 

 which he supposed would hold his whole collection. 

 But he lived to fill two more of equal size, and his 

 herbarium has been perhaps doubled since his death 

 by the acquisitions of his son and of its present posses- 

 sor. 



One great and mortifying impediment to the per- 

 fect preservation of an herbarium arises from the at-^ 

 tacks of insects. A little beetle called Ptinus Fur is, 

 more especially, the pest of collectors, la} ing its eggs 

 in the germens or receptacle of flowers, and others of 

 the more solid parts, which are speedily devoured by 

 the maggots when hatched, and by tl^ir devastations 

 paper and plants are alike involved in ruin. The 

 most bitter and acrid tribes, as Euphorbia, Gentiana, 

 Prunus, the Syngenesious class, and especially Wil- 

 lows, are preferred by these vermin. The last-men- 

 tioned family can scarcely be thoroughly dried before 



