PEOCEEDINGS OP THE 



deal of attention. The letters before us explain their whole 

 history. If it had been known at the time from what source and 

 what motive these articles originated, they probably would have 

 carried less weight than was accorded to them, or than they deserved.. 

 For although obviously Traill's primary object was to advance the 

 personal interests of his friend, he performed a public service in 

 showing up the miserable conditions under which the Natural 

 History collections were perishing at Montague House, in drawing 

 attention to the almost total loss of the Sloane collection, and in 

 paving the way towards the creation of a separate Department of 

 Zoology. At the same time he injured the legitimate claims of 

 the British Museum as the depository for collections made at the 

 national expense, so that only a few years later the Treasury 

 declined to deposit in the British Museum any of the Arctic spe- 

 cimens collected by Sir J. Richardson, and ordered them to be 

 distributed between the Zoological Society, the Edinburgh Museum^ 

 aad Swainson. 



A man of Traill's scientific training and aptitude to practical 

 investigation could not be allured by the quinarian fancies, of 

 which Swainson soon became the principal exponent, and thus the 

 correspondence between the two men ceased soon after Traill's 

 removal to Edinburgh. 



In the succeeding three or foiu' years, Swainson seems to have 

 been chiefly occupied with the study and increase of his zoological 

 collections ; and zoological work absorbed so much of his time as 

 to leave him no leisure for engaging in a serious study of the 

 plants which he had brought home from Brazil. Yet he must 

 have had that intention, as he persistently declined to communicate 

 any of them even to a friend of such long standing as Dr. W, 

 Hooker, with the exception of some Cryptogams, which were 

 described by the latter in his ' Musci Exotici.' When after the 

 lapse of some years he complied with Hooker's request, the speci- 

 mens had been much deteriorated, and the intrinsic value of the 

 collection impaired, the majority of the new forms having been 

 described in the meantime elsewhere from the collections of other 

 traveUei's. The collection, as we are informed by Swainson, con- 

 sisted of about 1200 species. He acted more prudently with 

 regard to seeds and living plants which he had brought back from 

 Brazil. These he sent to various Botanical Gardens, most of them 

 to Kew, which as a collection of exotic plants had already risen to 

 such prominence that Barron Eield in one of his letters places it 

 far above the older sister institution at the Jardin des Plantes. 



Swainson's correspondence at this period was very extensive. 

 Among English Zoologists there is scarcely one with whom 

 he was not in more or less temporary communication : we 

 have many letters from Horsfield, Burchell the African traveller, 

 L. W. Dillwyn, G. Loddiges, Sir W. Jardine, J. Eichardson, 

 A7"igors, Bloxam (who had collected in the Sandwich Islands, and 

 afterwards beheved himself to be the culprit who introduced 

 Anacharis alsinastrum into British waters), J. E. Gray, Riippell 



