Xlviii PEOCEEDIXGS OF THE 



America, the herbarium of Asa Gray, recently secured to the Har- 

 vard University, now occupies a first rank. That of Melbourne in 

 Australia, founded by Ferdinand Mueller, has, through his indefati- 

 gable exertions, attained very large proportions ; and that of the 

 Botanical Garden of Calcutta, under the successive administrations 

 of Dr. Thomson and the late Dr. T. Anderson, had recovered in a 

 great measure its proper position, which I trust it will henceforth 

 maintain. Our own great national herbarium and library at Kew 

 is now far ahead of all others ia extent, value, and practical utility ; 

 originally created, maintained, and extended by the two Hookers, 

 father and son, their unremitting and disinterested exertions have 

 succeeded in obtaining for it that Government support without 

 which no such establishment can be rendered really efiicient, whilst 

 their liberal and judicious management has secured for it the 

 countenance and approbation of the numerous scientific foreigners 

 who have visited or corresponded with it. Of the valuable botani- 

 cal materials accumulated in the British Museum during the last 

 century, I say nothing now ; for the natural-history portion of that 

 establishment is in a state of transition, and my own views as re- 

 gards botany have been elsewhere expressed. I have only to add 

 that we have also herbaria of considerable extent at the Universi- 

 ties of Oxford, Cambridge, and at Edinburgh, and at Trinity Col- 

 lege, Dublin, and to express a hope that the necessity of maintain- 

 ing and extendiug them will be duly felt by those great educational 

 bodies, if they desire to secure for their Professorial chairs botanists 

 of eminence. 



3. Pictorial representations or drawings have the advantage over 

 Museum specimens that they can be, in many respects, more com- 

 plete ; they can represent objects and portions of objects which it has 

 been impossible to preserve ; they can give coloiu' and other charac- 

 ters-lost in the course of desiccation ; they preserve anatomical and 

 microscopical details in a form in which the observer can have re- 

 course to them again and again without repeatiug his dissections ; 

 and although, like a Museum specimen, each drawing represents 

 usually an individual, not a species, yet that individual can by exact 

 copies be multiplied to any extent for the simultaneous use of 

 any number of naturalists ; whilst specimens of the same sjiecies 

 in different museums are corresponding only, not identical, and im- 

 perfect comparison and determination of specimens supposed to be 

 authentic (i. e. exactly coiTesponding to the one originally described) 

 have led into numerous eiTors. Drawings, moreover, by diagrams 

 and other devices, can represent more or less perfectly the abstract 



