HERBARIUMS PRESENTED. 211 



Harris and of his papers relating thereto, on condition 

 that the members of the Horticultural Society should 

 have free access to the collection, subject to the rules 

 and regulations of the society having it in charge. In 

 1871 Philip S. Sprague presented to the Society two 

 cases containing specimens, in all their different forms, 

 of the insects injurious to the potato and cabbage, in- 

 cluding the Doryphora decem-lineata, or Colorado potato 

 beetle, with its parasites, and the Pieris rapse, or Euro- 

 pean cabbage butterfly. Interesting herbariums have 

 also been presented by the friends of the Society, among 

 which may be mentioned a collection of plants from the 

 Island of Crete in 1851, by Dr. Giuseppe Monarchini, a 

 corresponding member of the Society, and an herbarium 

 of our own indigenous plants, including a good collec- 

 tion of grasses, made by Dennis Murray, and presented 

 by his daughters. But the most valuable acquisition of 

 this class is the herbarium of North American ferns, 

 presented June 5, 1875, by George E. Davenport, which 

 contained good specimens of one hundred and twenty- 

 one out of the one hundred and thirty-one species 

 then known, the larger portion of them represented by 

 numerous specimens, exhibiting nearly every variety 

 of form in which a fern can be found, and from many 

 (often widely different) localities. Mr. Davenport has 

 since added to this herbarium many rare specimens. 



There may have been, in years past, members who 

 deemed that too large a proportion of the Society's 

 funds was spent upon the library ; but we believe that 

 there are none who can now entertain that opinion, or 

 who do not, as they look upon this rare and valuable 

 collection of books, rejoice in the progress made in 

 building up a horticultural library. By the terms of 



