14 
CURATOR AND LIBRARIAN’S REPORT. 
Your Curator has pleasure in recording below additions to the 
Society’s Museum. ‘The names of the donors will be found in 
the detailed list. 
To the Society’s Herbarium Collections there have recently 
been added 38 large folio volumes of dried Plants, the gift of 
Admiral Sir R. Massie Blomfield, K.C.M.G., who writes as 
follows :—‘‘ I have three large folio volumes of dried plants, 
collected about a century ago by one of my great-aunts (sister 
of the late Mrs. Massie of Coddington), who lived for many years 
in Stanley Place. They were given to me by the late Mrs. 
Elizabeth Buchanan, of Northcote, Westbury-on-Trym, one of 
my aunts. If you think that these volumes, the contents of 
which are in surprisingly good condition, would be acceptable to 
the Chester Society of Natural History, I should like to present 
them as a memento of the long connection of the Massie- 
Townshend-Blomfield families with the County and its ‘ rare old 
city of Chester.’ The founder of the Society was a brother 
Canon of my father in Chester Cathedral for some years, and it 
is a pleasure to think that his association with the City is as green 
in the memory of the citizens, and the enthusiasm for natural 
history which they imbibed from him, is as keen and fresh as 
ever.”’ - 
An examination of the volumes shews that the specimens of 
plants are arranged according to the Linnean classification. 
Great care has evidently been bestowed on the mounting of the 
specimens, a large number of which have the names and 
localities appended. A fair proportion are plants found in the 
Society’s district, viz., Cheshire and North Wales ; others are 
outside the district ; but with few exceptions all are British. 
At the end of each volume is a MS. list of specimens contained 
‘therein, the total number of species for the three volumes being 
approximately 650. 
