86 
REPORT OF THE CURATOR OF THE HERBARIUM 
FOR 1936 
Dr. C. StuArT GAGER, DIRECTOR. 
Sir: T submit herewith my report for the year ending December 
fo derm ec folen 
Organization of the herbarium has been going on steadily, and 
the collection now emerges as probably one of the best small 
collections in the United States. There are a little over 100,000 
sheets of flowering plants and ferns, fairly rich in co-types of 
North American plants and with unexpected richness in early col- 
lections by Torrey (circa 1816), Cooper, Cozzens, Croom, and 
others of the early part of the Nineteenth Century. The her- 
barium of E. S. Miller of Wading River, and subsequent addi- 
tions by other collectors, including an assortment of the late W. C. 
Ferguson’s plants, make the flora of Long Island exceptionally 
well represented. The extensive herbarium of Henry Dautun 
well illustrates the wealth of plant species once to be found in 
the New Jersey towns bordering the Hackensack River, an area 
now largely covered by suburban dwellings, with its native flora 
forever lost. Plants of the far western states are especially well 
shown by A. A. Heller’s herbarium, pure 
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aased in 1913, containing, 
among other things, many of his type-sheets of Lupinus. From 
the Pacific States are also large consignments of specimens from 
Suksdorf, Elmer, Bolander, and others. Altogether, this com- 
paratively small and compact herbarium-collection readily pro- 
vides material for the identification of plants from the United 
States, and its constantly growing use is an indication of increas- 
ing accessibility. During the past year the species of several large 
fe 
genera such as Carex, Panicum, and Felianthis, have been placec 
in systematic rather than alphabetical order, an arrangement which 
greatly facilitates work in such complicated groups. 
The writer, accompanied by Mr. Buhle, photographer for the 
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Garden, left on April 15th for a hurried trip into the southern 
mountains, returning to Brooklyn May 4. Making a short stop 
at Charleston, South Carolina, to visit the museum and the her- 
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barium of Stephen Elliott, we proceeded to the Cumberland Moun- 
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tains of Middle Tennessee where we made Sewanee our head- 
