306 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



M.P. ; the other members being "the Right Honourable John, 

 Baron Avebury, P.O., F.R.S., and Frederick DuCane Godman, 

 Esquire, F.R.S., as representing the Trustees of the British Museum ; 

 with Stephen Edward Spring Rice, Esquire, C.B. ; Horace Alfred 

 Darner Seymour, Esquire, C.B. ; Professor Isaac Bayley Balfour, 

 D.Sc, F.R.S., Queen's Botanist for Scotland; Francis Darwin, 

 Esquire, M.B., F.R.S., Reader in Botany in the University of Cam- 

 bridge ; and Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., F.R.S. ^ Benjamin 

 Daydon Jackson, Esquire, Secretary of the Linnean Society, was 

 afterwards appointed Secretary to the Committee." 



The Report is signed by all of these except Lord Avebury, who 

 sent in a separate memorandum, which is appended to the Report, 

 and follows it here. Lord Avebury and Mr. Seymour also add a 

 memorandum in which they do not agree with their colleagues as 

 to the advisability of creating a new advisory Board; this we do not 

 think it necessary to reproduce in these pages. — Ed. Journ. Box.] 



Preliminary Observation^. 



The Botanical Department of the British Museum, and the 

 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, are, in their primary intention, 

 institutions of widely different characters. 



The Botanical Department of the British Museum is a collection 

 of such objects belonging to the vegetable kingdom as can be placed 

 in a museum, and its functions are limited to the uses of such a 

 collection for the advancement of botanic science and for the 

 purposes of giving popular instruction and of exciting popular 

 interest in natural history. It does not concern itself with the 

 applications of botany, either at home or elsewhere. 



The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is, in the first place, an 

 organization dealing with and giving assistance to His Majesty's 

 Government on questions arising in various parts of the Empire 

 in which botanic science is involved. So far it has a distinctly 

 imperial character. It is at the same time an institution for the 

 prosecution of theoretical botanic research, i.e. of botanic research 

 carried on independent of practical ends, it is a school for advanced 

 horticultural education, it acts as the botanic adviser of the Govern- 

 ment on agricultural questions, and as a public garden it affords 

 general instruction and recreation to the people. 



The British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 

 possess each of them an herbarium or collection of dried plants, 

 together with certain botanic specimens, fruits, woody parts, &c., 

 which cannot be "laid in" in an herbarium as ordinarily understood. 

 For the present purposes, however, in speaking of the herbarium, 

 we may suppose such objects to be included. These herbaria, with 

 the libraries attached to them, are, so far as pertains to the present 

 inquiry, the only collections of a similar character belonging to the 

 two institutions. The two herbaria having features in common, 

 have nevertheless each special features. The differences are in 

 part due to the way in which each collection has grown up, as will 

 be seen from the following brief historical statement. 



