Be) 
the capacity of the cases, and provides a more satisfactory arrange- 
ment of the main room. 
Component Collections Additional assistants, supplied during 
the latter part of 1930 by the Emergency Work Bureau, have made 
it possible, under Dr. Svenson’s supervision, to mount a large 
quantity of hitherto unmounted material and incorporate it into the 
active collection. Attention is called to the statement (on page 
92) of new collections added to the herbarium of flowering plants. 
The Purposes of a Herbarium 
Perhaps no portion of botanic garden equipment is more difficult 
to explain to a Jayman than the herbarium. A library is under- 
stood; at least most people fhink they understand the uses and 
value of a library. A collection of living plants in a garden is 
understood. A botanical museum, comprising labeled specimens 
effectively exhibited has meaning to the layman. But what is the 
use of a collection of dried plants, pasted to herbarium sheets, 
labeled, and then filed away in the compartments of herbarium 
cases? 
Sir Joseph Hooker, the famous director of the Royal Botanic 
Gardens at Kew, had his troubles in trying to make government 
officials understand various needs of a botanic garden, among 
them, the needs of a herbarium. In a letter to Huxley in 1858, 
speaking of the necessity of a herbarium at Kew, he notes that, 
“it 1s impossible to work scientifically a garden of 20,000 to 
30,000 species, and name the things sent to us to name, without a 
first rate Herbarium and Library here. The seeds sent are often 
to be known only by the accompanying dried specimens which go 
into the Herbarium, and the latter becomes in a thousand ways an 
indispensable adjunct to the Garden and reciprocally (by being the 
depository of the plants once cultivated in the Garden) an integral 
part of the establishment, and a record of its progress and efforts, 
its successes and failures as a horticultural establishment, all quite 
apart from its scientific uses.” 
Later, when the Lemann herbarium of 30,000 specimens was 
offered as a gift to Cambridge University, Hooker refers to his 
old teacher Henslow trying to prove to the Cambridge Dons “ that 
such collections have other and higher value than old china’! 
— 
