PREFACE 
HE collecting of books for what is now the Library of the Arnold Arboretum was begun 
in 1874, when I obtained a few standard works needed in planning the Arboretum and 
arranging its collections. This small library was gradually increased, and when a few 
years later it was determined to prepare at the Arboretum an account of the trees growing 
naturally in North America it was found necessary to secure many additional volumes on 
dendrology and descriptive botany essential to the production of that work. The number of 
volumes had increased to six thousand in 1892 when, accommodations having been provided 
for a library at the Arboretum, I presented them to the University. 
In addition to the contributions which I have been able to make to the Library, it has received 
some important gifts. The first of these, made by the late Charles James Sprague of Boston, 
contained a number of valuable books chiefly relating to North American botany, and including a 
number of the early papers of Asa Gray, which even thirty years ago were extremely rare. In 
1905 the late Francis Skinner of Boston (H. C. 1862) placed in my hands a substantial sum of 
money for the purchase of books for the Library. After his death his son, Francis Skinner of 
Dedham, continued until his death in 1914 to make generous gifts of money to the University for 
the purchase of books for the Arboretum Library as a memorial to his father; and Mrs. Sarah Choate 
Sears of Boston has for several years made it possible by important gifts, to add to the Library a 
number of rare books published before the middle of the eighteenth century. 
In the formation of this Library particular attention has been paid to books relating to den- 
drology, general descriptive botany, the cultivation of trees, the works of travelers in which 
appear descriptions of trees and of general features of vegetation, and in obtaining complete sets of 
the periodicals in all languages relating to botany, forestry and allied subjects. Except when 
it has seemed desirable to complete the collection of the publications of some of the most distin- 
guished botanical authors no attempt has been made to place in the Library books relating exclu- 
sively to herbaceous plants, as the Arboretum was established for the cultivation and study of trees 
and shrubs. Little attention has been paid to books relating to the description and care of the 
fruit trees usually cultivated in cold countries, for such pomological books are found in libraries 
devoted to horticulture. Attention, however, has been paid to books relating to the history and 
cultivation of trees and shrubs valued for special products, like tea, coffee, cocoa, oranges and 
their allies, cinchona, olives, the mulberry in its relation to the manufacture of silk, and others 
because little attention had previously been paid in this country to such books, and it seemed 
desirable that the library of an institution like the Arnold Arboretum should contain all books 
in any way relating to woody plants, with the exception of those which are most valuable in a 
