38(5 



* PRESERVATION OF 



place of growth, time of gathering, the finder's name, 

 or any other concise piece of information, may be in- 

 scribed on its appropriate paper. This is the plan of 

 the Linnaean Herbarium, in which every species, which 

 its original possessor had before him when he wrote 

 his great work the Species Plantarum, is numbered 

 both in pencil and in ink, as well as named, the former 

 kind of numbers having been temporary till the book 

 to which they refer was printed, after which they were 

 confirmed w r ith a pen, and a copy of the book, now 

 also in my hands, was marked in reference to them. 

 Here therefore we do not depend on the opinion 

 merely, even of Linnaeus, for we have always before 

 our eyes the very object which was under his inspec- 

 tion. We have similar indications of the plants de- 

 scribed in his subsequent \vorks, the herbarium being 

 most defective in those of his second Mantissa, his 

 least accurate publication. We often find remarks 

 there, made from specimens acquired after the Species 

 Plant arum was published. These the herbarium oc- 

 casionally shows to be of a different species from the 

 original one, and it thus enables us to correct such 

 errors. 



The specimens thus pasted, are conveniently kept 

 in lockers, or on the shelves of a proper cabinet. Lin- 

 naeus in the Philosophia Botanica exhibits a figure of 

 one, divided into appropriate spaces for each class, 

 which he supposed would hold his whole collection. 

 But he lived to fill two more of equal size, and his 



