THE HERBARIUM 



Old books, old flowers, old feeling, foliage pressed 



By time, who lays the stony weight of years. SYMONDS. 



A report upon the Herbarium* has been published so 

 recently by the Delegates of the University Press that we 

 need not reprint the lists of collections in detail, but we 

 may express a hope that, when a new edition is printed, the 

 name of the author may also be permitted to appear upon 

 the title-page. 



The collections of Dried Plants were no doubt at first 

 kept with the books by the Professor in his private house, 

 but when they became too bulky, special accommodation had 

 to be provided elsewhere, At first the Eastern Conservatory, 

 the present Library, was used, but in 1850 the old Central 

 Western Conservatory, being no longer used for cultivation 

 of plants, was adapted for the purpose. The collections 

 include one of the earliest in Britain, namely, that of 300 

 North Italian Plants, made by Gregory of Reggio about i6o6,t 

 and the following : 



* [G. C. Druce.] "An Account of the Herbarium of the University of 

 Oxford," 1897. See also "The Dillenian Herbaria," Oxford, 1907, by 

 the same author. 



f This hortus siccus, one of the oldest, if not the oldest in existence, 

 was known to Baxter, who had cleaned it in 1862, and to Maxwell Masters 

 (Card. Chron,, p. 808, 1889). At some, time when the Herbarium was 

 transferred from the Western Building to its present quarters (1882-4), 

 this unique collection, with Bloxam's British Rubi, and others, were 

 (temporarily ?) deposited above the coke in the boiler-house, and by gross 



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