377 



collection. There have been sent away in exchange, to Tale 

 College, forty-five sj^ecimens, thirty-two sj^ecies. 



The Curator of Botany reports that the Herbarium and 

 other Botanical collections came into his hands and under his 

 care last August, npon his return home, and were tlien, 

 owing to the excellent care of his predecessor, in very good 

 condition, but were still necessarily loose in folds of thin 

 paper, in which condition they were in danger of being soon 

 ground to powder if much handled, and of having the labels, 

 often as important a part of the specimen as the dried plant 

 itself, lost or misplaced. The larger part of the collection 

 was arranged according to the classification of Endlichers 

 "Genera Plantarum," which had the very great advantage of 

 rendering any plant easy of access by the current number of 

 the Genus upon the cover. Since the publication of Endlicher's 

 "Genera Plantarum," however, the acquisitions to botanical 

 science have been so large as to render a somewhat revised 

 arrangement necessary, and as that is to be found nowhere 

 better than in the new "Genera Plantarum" of Bentham and 

 Hooker, that work has been adopted as the standard by 

 which to arrange the collection, and it has been reaiTanged 

 in accordance with it as far as the work noAV goes. 



As it is unsafe to allow Herbarium specimens to be much 

 handled until they are securely glued to stifi* paper, and as the 

 view has been to render the Herbarium accessible and useful 

 as far possible, a good deal of attention has been j^aid to 

 having them so glued, and about fifteen thousand specimens 

 have undergone such treatment during the winter. Other 

 necessary work towards tlie lasting arrangement and preser- 

 vation of the collection has been done, so far as time pennit- 

 ted. 



It is hoped that the work, such as is mentioned above, is 

 about half done. The necessary expenditures for assistance, 

 paper, etc., have been less than three hundred dollars (8300) 

 so far, and another two hundred dollars will perhaps suffice to 

 finish the work. The amount is larger than was at first esti- 

 mated, but the difficulty of forming a judgment beforehand 

 is considerable. 



