112 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



John Smith, for many years curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 Kew, who built up the superb collection of living ferns at that 

 institution. 



The Kew fern herbarium is composed of material from very much 

 the same sources as those just mentioned, in so far as Jamaica itself 

 is concerned, but it is much richer from the standpoint of general 

 fern study, owing to life-long interest in this group on the part of 

 two famous former directors. Sir William Hooker and Mr. J. G. 

 Baker, and the peculiarly favorable official and personal relations that 

 existed during a long period of remarkable activity in world-wide 

 botanical exploration. In wealth of historic material it is unrivaled. 



Botanisk Have?! 



^.^"t^^^^^., ■■(f) 



Fig. 97. — A view in the Botanical Garden, Copenhagen. The Botanical Museum 



is near by. 



The beautiful Gardens as well bear eloquent testimony to the devoted 

 and enlightened support accorded this institution for generations. 



It was at Stockholm, however, that the largest number of type 

 specimens bearing directly upon the Jamaican problem were en- 

 countered. Here, in the beautiful new Riksmuseet building near the 

 northern boundary of the city, are preserved most of the original 

 specimens collected in Jamaica by the illustrious Swedish botanist, 

 Olof Swartz, in 1784-86, and described by him ; and I was able to 

 make nearly all desired comparisons, these based not only on speci- 

 mens that Swartz had retained in his own herbarium, but in scores 

 of cases substantiated also by specimens presented by him to con- 

 temporaneous Swedish botanists, whose collections eventually have 

 come to the Museum. 



