226 REPORT ON NA.TIONAL MUSEUM. 



chemist and wholesale dealer. Of these 1,188 were the gift of large 

 coimnercial firms engaged in this branch of business, notably Messrs. 

 W. H. Schieffelin & Co., of New York, I'arks Davis & Co., of Detroit 

 Mich., and Wallace Brothers of Statesville, N. C. Four hundred and 

 two specimens, consisting of drugs from various Central and South 

 American countries, which formed a part of the exhibits of those coun- 

 tries at the United States Centennial Exhibition in the year 1876, have 

 been transferred b3'the Agricultural Department of the Government to 

 this section of the Museum. Some of these it is impossible at present 

 to identify, since in some cases the name has become effaced from the 

 label ; in otliers they bear only the vernacular name without reference 

 to botanical source. There are, however, many among them of much 

 interest, which it would have required considerable time and effort to 

 have obtained otherwise. 



"With the exceptions just mentioned the accessions have consisted 

 principally of standard articles of the materia medica, including most 

 of the new remedies to which the attention of the medical profession is 

 at present directed. 



"Deserving of special mention is a fine collection of cinchona barks, 

 presented, through Messrs. Schieffelin & Co., by the firm of Howard & 

 Sons, of Loudon, which comprises 35 specimens of carefully identified 

 barks from the cinchona plantations of India, Ceylon, and Java, where 

 the cultivation of the various species of cinchona tree has become an im- 

 l)ortant industry; important not only to those engaged in it, but to man- 

 kind in general, as giving the assurance of a regular and unfailing supjdy 

 of this most valuable of all known remedies. This collection of East 

 Indian barks is supplemented by specimens of the usual commercial 

 barks from South America; by cultivated barks from Mexico, presented 

 by SeDor Hugo Finck; and by barks and herbarium specimens of the 

 flowering branches of the officinal species of cinchona, from the Eoyal 

 Gardens at Calcutta. Objects of interest in this section, also, are varie- 

 ties of Turkey opium, in the original packages, and a number of rare 

 drugs of the Indian i)liarmacopoeia, obtained by Messrs. Schieffelin & 

 Co., from the museum of the Pharmaceutical Society of London. 



"Special effort has been made to obtain illustrated works on medical 

 botany, in order that as complete a series as i)ossible of drawings of the 

 plants furnishing the drugs of commerce might be shown. These books 

 have been obtained by purchase, and are already suflicient to sui)ply 

 good colored idates of the most important medicinal plants of this and 

 other countries. Photograph}' has also been employed in botanical 

 illustration, and samples of its work have been received which prove 

 the applicability of the method as a cheap substitute for hand-drawing. 



"2. An alphabetical catalogue of the whole collection has been pre- 

 pared, with class references, by means of which the specimens already 

 on exhibition may be found, and the proi)er portion of those in reserve 

 indicated. 



