IMTORTANCL OF STATE HERBARIUM 2ft' 



liuyal Botanic Gardens, P^dinburgb, Scotland, writes: 

 *' In the newer countries, where progress is being made in 

 agricultural research, the need of an adequate library and 

 herbarium is realised and as a rule is being supported 

 with the resources of the State." Dr. Wm. Trelease, 

 formerly Director of the Missouri Botanic Garden, and 

 now Professor of Agriculture at the University of 

 Illinois America, remarks : '' When I came to the Univer- 

 .si ty of Illinois after establishing for research purposes 

 a great herbarium at the Missouri Botanical Garden, I 

 supposed til at my days of herbarium accumulation were 

 ended. I was hardly established here, however, when 

 graduate students in agriculture began asking me for 

 work in special subjects that can be studied only by the 

 use of large and authentic herbarium collections." Dr. 

 A. J. Ewart, the Government Botanist at Melbourne, 

 Australia, writes : *' No country can of course be regarded 

 as civilized and self-supporting from the point of view 

 of botanical science unless it maintains a herbarium. A 

 properly equipped herbarium has the same relation to 

 botanical work as a Bureau of Standards has to Physical 

 Science or as a public library has to the education of the 

 community," while the Government Botanist at Sydney 

 remarks : '^ We know, that the herbarium, of which the 

 Museum is mere adjunct, is absolutely necessary for the 

 study of plants, but a herbarium is not an institution 

 that the public visit as they do an art gallery, since it 

 is of the character of a workshop or a laboratory; nothing 

 very attractive to the casual observer, and therefore he 

 does not know that it is vital to an accurate knowledge 

 of the economic vegetation." Dr. J. J. Smith, Chief of 

 the Herbarium at the Buitenzorg Botanic Gardens in 

 the Dutch East Indies writes in a similar strain to the 

 above and points out that several publications on the 

 economic ])lants of Java would not have been possible 

 without reference to the herbarium. Dr. L. Cockayne, 

 who has done so much for the agricultural development 

 of New Zealand, writes: "the economic value of a her- 



