HERBARIUM 149 



Specimens Locality Date * 



Bobart Herbarium . . . 2,000 Oxford Garden 1656-1670 



Morison (Bobart) Herbarium . 5,300 General 1680-1714 



Du Bois Herbarium . . 13,000 ,, 1690-1723 



Sherard ,, .- . 14,000 ,, 1696-1726 



Shaw ,, . . . 660 Barbary circ. 1720 



Dillenius ,, . - . 575 Britain 1724-1741 



Sibthorp ,, . . . 2,000 Greece 1786-1794 



So rich were these collections in plants that Sir James 

 Smith pronounced the Oxford Herbarium to be the best 

 in P^ngland, until the arrival of the one which he had himself 

 obtained from the celebrated Linnaeus. 



By the acquisition of the FIELDING HERBARIUM in 1852^ 

 over 80,000 specimens were added, and the collection was 

 once more raised to a pre-eminent position among the 

 herbaria of the world. 



The Fielding Collection was at first kept on the ground- 

 floor room of the old Western Conservatory, the Upper of 

 Sherard Room being devoted to the other herbaria and to 

 the Botanical and Agricultural Museum. This Upper Room 

 could only be reached by a ladder so shaky that an eminent 

 botanist, the Rev. W. Newbould, once said that, but for the 



carelessness left there and forgotten, except as bundles of " rubbish." The 

 " rediscovery " was attributed by the Athenaeum, June 8, 1889 (and quoted 

 in Card, Chron., p. 752), to the then sub-curator, Dr. Schonland, but 

 there was no great merit in any such rediscovery, for the collection was 

 bound in a cover made of the leaves of an Italian Service Book and 

 clearly labelled " Herbarium Divers. Nat. Gregorii a Reggio." The real 

 credit is due to Mr. Druce, who searched among the "rubbish," recognised 

 the collection as the Gregory of the Bolognese Reggio (not of Reggio di 

 Calabria), a man noted for his botanical knowledge, and who eventually 

 undertook the remounting of the collection. See Druce, "History of 

 Botany," Pharm. Journ., January, 1890, reprinted in part in Journ. Bot., 

 p. 276, 1890. 



* Dates revised by Mr. Druce. 



f Donation accepted, June 15, 1852. ,2,000 was voted from money 

 received from the University Press, for maintaining and adding to the 

 collection. "1,250 was voted for a suitable building for its reception in 

 the Botanic Garden, 



