' 



disciplinary field have been carried on by the Museum staff for 

 over a century. The course in economic botany, now entitled 

 "Plants and Human Affairs", has been taught for 107 consecu- 

 tive years by five educators; it represents the oldest course in the 

 sciences at Harvard University and the oldest course on this 

 subject possibly in the world. 



Among the numerous facilities at the Museum which support 

 teaching and research in economic botany, one of the most 

 important is the Economic Herbarium of Oakes Ames. There 

 are actuality two separate Ames herbaria at Harvard: the Eco- 

 nomic Herbarium located in the Botanical Museum, and the 

 Ames Orchid Herbarium, now housed in the University Herba- 

 ria building. 



The Economic Herbarium was presented to the University b> 

 Professor Oakes Ames early in 1940. Although a small herbarium 

 of useful plants had existed previously from the collections of 

 Professor Asa Gray and Professor George Goodale, it was 

 Ames' efforts from the early 1900's to 1940 that assembled the 

 beginnings of a significant and very specialized collection of 

 herbarium specimens. The purposes of this herbarium were 

 primarily for teaching and secondarily for scholarly research in 

 economic botany and the ethnobotanical uses of plants. The 

 species in this herbarium are designed to supplement, not dupli- 

 cate, the extensive floristic collections of the Gray Herbarium 

 and Arnold Arboretum; and with the Economic and Orchid 

 Herbaria, Harvard's herbarium facilities total some 4,500,000 

 specimens. 



The 125th anniversary of the Botanical Museum dates from 

 1 858, when Asa Gray, Professor of Natural History at Harvard, 

 received from Sir William Hooker, Director of the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens at Kew, an acquisition of undetermined size of 

 wood samples, pods, cones, nuts, witches' broom, palm trunks, 

 monkey pots and other vegetable products of economic value 

 for teaching purposes. During the following eighty years, the 

 Botanical Museum grew to become an international centre 

 where plant origins could be studied, drug plants identified and 

 fibres compared. Under the ambitious guidance of Professors 



36 



