32 BOTANICAL NEWS. 
is — position he occupied "MM the most valued botanists of his 
Taid by feelings of piety, a friend of the late Robert Brown, Dr. Boott, 
has placed over the chimneypiece of the back room of 17, Dean Street, Soho, 
(now occupied by an ee a tablet bearing the following inscription :— 
**'This room, the library, and th , the study, of the Right Honour- 
able Sir Joseph Banks, Baronet, ‘President ‘of the Royal Society, and, after his 
death, of Robert Brown, Esq., F.R.S., Foreign Associate of the Academy of 
Sciences and the Institute of France, were for nearly seventy years the resort 
of the most distinguished men of science in the world, the last assemblage of 
whom was on the occasion of the funeral of Mr. Pawn, who expired on the 
10th of June, 1858, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. 
The Merbarieni ot J our Rar is still in cue ra It was bequeathed 
by him t Dale, apothecary, at Brain who was about forty- 
flve years old at the time of Ray’ s death (a7 05), and re him till the year 
1739, when he left his books and plants as a legacy to the Apothecaries’ 
Company. Suitable presses were erected for their conservation at Chelsea Gar- 
dens, under the direction of Sir Hans Sloane. Isaac Rand, the assistant, and 
in eh m the successor to Petiver, - botanical demonstrator to the anpati 
y years before Dale’s 
herbarium * was we deposited there. He was then making an extensive hortus 
siccus, which at his death was placed along with those of Ray and Dale. These 
three herbaria, containing collections of British and foreign plants, with the 
an names attached, have remained ever since in suitable presses until 
lately, when, ge ae the exertions of the Keeper of the Botanical Department 
y the British Museum, seconded by N. B. Ward, Esq., one of the Court of 
he Apothecaries’ Company, they have been secured for our National Herba- 
rium. The herbarium of Ray—certainly the most interesting memorial existing 
of that great and good man—is contained in 19 thin quarto or small folio 
fascicles, each characterized by a letter of the alphabet. The plants, most ei 
them still in excellent condition, are sewn on the paper, and labelled in 
peculiarly neat and plain handwriting of Ray. They are put together adi 
without order, probably as they were collected. Accompanying them is a 
manuscript index, also in Ray’s handwriting ; it is entitled “ Horti Sieci Raiani 
Catalogus," and contains an index to the fascicles as far as letter S, arranged 
alphabetically, in this manner, “ Cyclamen autumnale hedere folio, K. 4, 
M. 5, O. 8, 8.6.” There are besides a separate collection of Grasses carefully 
with those of Dale and Rand, both of whom helped Dillenius in his edition of 
Ray’s ‘ Synopsis, added to the collections of Sloane, Petiver, Sherard, Buddle, 
Richardson, and others, already in the British Museum, will supply ample ma- 
terials to the Committee of the British Association, consisting of Dr. Gray; 
Prof. Babington, and the Rev. W. W. Newbould, to prepare a valuable report ° 
on ‘ The Plants of Ray’s Synopsis Mies as determined by an examination 
mpera herbaria of Ray and others 
