it YN TGT 
. evidently one of those things which, from t 
ON THE ORIGIN OF HERBARIA. 297 
tion, look remarkably like a calyx. These seem to have been generally 
overlooked by draughtsmen. In the ‘ English Botany’ figure, which is 
not strictly characteristic of either variety, they are entirely omitted. I 
examined the original drawing of this plate by James Sowerby, which, 
with the whole series made for ‘ English Botany,’ is now in the British 
"Museum. I found that the careful artist had correctly given the calyx- 
like appendices at the base of the fruit; but Sir James Edward Smith, 
to whom the drawings were submitted for approval before being ên- — 
graved, has corrected (!) the drawing, because, as he writes, they are 
“too like a calyx.” Sir James, knowing that the fruit in Umbelliferze 
is inferior, at once discarded Sowerby’s “ calyx,” thus making his 
. generalization or preconceived theory overturn the observed fact of the 
other, a proceeding too common amongst a certain class of naturalists. 
ON THE ORIGIN OF HERBARIA. 
By Ernst H. T. Mever.* 
. As plants were dried from time immemorial for therapeutical purposes, 
it is probable that some of the early official collectors spread out either 
the whole or parts of some of these plants, and dried them between the 
leaves of a book or sheets of paper, as we do for our herbaria. This 
method of preserving plants, practised even by boys in the present day, 
becomes interesting when we inquire into its earliest use as an auxi- 
liary to science,—but an auxiliary which even now is of more import- 
ance than the extensive botanical gardens of our day; for herbaria are 
the foundations of all published Floras, even those of Europe, but es- 
Pecially those of remote countries, the plants of some of which we only 
know by the dried collections brought from them. But as far as I am 
aware, no historical account of the application of this method of pre- 
serving plants for scientific purposes has been written. ‘The herbarium 
heir universal and daily 
Use; are overlooked, as regards their origin and history, by those em- 
* We publish this translation from the last volume of the learned, though unfor- 
tunately prar ‘Geschichte der Botanik ' of the lamented Professor Meyer, as 
introduction to an account of the older Herbaria preserved in the different public 
collections of Great Britain, which we hope to lay before our readers in an early 
nümber — Rp, 3 
