NATURE 
as regards supply,* nomenclature, and government, a summary 
of the amount of botanical work represented by the 140 volumes 
having the Herbarium at Kew as their cause or conditions, 
Seeing that—were this summary to be held as decisive, ad- 
ministratively, for carrying out his urgent desires—a Government 
impressed with its responsibilities for the application of public 
money, would place on retiring allowances the proportion of the 
staff no longer needed in the Metropolitan Herbarium—there 
was a motive in addition to my duty in response to the inquiry of 
the First Commissioner of Works, to sift the grounds of Dr. 
Hooker’s attack on the Department of Botany in the British 
Museum. The anxieties of its officers were too well founded. 
The argument from the amount of herbarium work at Kew 
since the practice of transferring there the dried plants collected 
in Government expeditions would be valid if such work could not 
be done elsewhere, or if such work had not been done in the 
Metropolitan Herbarium prior to the diversion therefrom of its 
legitimate supplies. 
But the ‘*Prodromus Flore Nove Hollandiz,” the 
«¢ Observations Systematical and Geographical on the 
Herbarium collected in the Vicinity of the Congo,” not to 
cite other works of Robert Brown, well known to botanists— 
and I may add the “‘ Plante Javanicze Rariores” of his successor, 
John Joseph Bennett, F.R.S.—are examples of ‘‘ scientific 
work ” at the London Herbarium, in relation to its legitimate 
supplies, which will bear comparison with the “scientific work 
which is turned out from the Herbarium at Kew.” 
The circtimstance which, in the emergency threatening a 
Department of Natural History in the British Museum I was 
bound to submit to the consideration of Government, was that 
the works added to Botanical Science, for which before its 
supplies were intercepted by a “‘competing establishment” the 
National Herbarium in London furnished the materials for 
publication, were works of assigned duty. The officers of such 
Herbarium had no trusts or responsibilities in relation to the 
Royal Gardens, but gave their aid in naming the living Plants 
at Kew ; leaving the officers in charge of those gardens free for 
the works and applications for which a Nation ‘provides and 
supports its collections of living plants. Had Robert Brown 
been the director of such establishment, those who had the 
inestimable pleasure and benefit of his intimacy know that his 
devotion to the experimental and physiological duties of his 
office would have been the prime and paramount subject of his 
time and labours at Kew. 
Permit me to exemplify my argument. In the “‘ Report of 
the Royal Garden at Calcutta for 1870” (No. 585, 14th May, 
1872) it is stated :—‘‘At the beginning of the year the total 
stock of Ipecacuanha amounted to five plants in Sikkim and 
seven in this garden. These represented the’ only surviving 
offspring of a single plant received from Dr. Hooker of the 
Royal Gardens, Kew, in 1866.—At the request of the Right 
Hon. the Secretary of State for India, attention has for some 
years past been given in Edinburgh to the propagation of 
Tpecacuanha plants for this country, and during the past year 
the supplies raised there began toarrive. Five ‘ Wardian Cases’ 
containing about 100 plants were received from Dr. Balfour of 
the Royal Botanical Gardens at Edinburgh.” The Curator of 
these gardens, Mr. McNab, referring to the earlier intro- 
duction of living plants of Cephaelis [pecacuanha into the Kew 
Gardens, and alluding to the slow and difficult method of its 
propagation by the adopted methods of cuttings, proceeds to 
describe the better method to which his experiments on living 
specimens led.+ ‘‘ The roots or rather rhizomes of the Cephaelis 
* Ans. to Q. 6,785, ‘‘ That the British Museum Herbarium and that at 
Kew should be under one control, and the former be continuously added to 
from Kew.” Inhis Ans. to Q 6,732, Dr. H. says—“‘ The trouble of supply- 
ing the South Kensington Museum would be very trifling,”—which I think 
robable. 
B + McNab “ On the Propagation of the Ipecacuanha plant,” Transactions of 
the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, vol. x. p, 318. 
are peculiarly annulated (PI. iv. fig. 2). A few of them were 
taken from one of the plants in the Botanic Garden during the 
month of August, 1869, and, after being cut into transverse sec- 
tions of different lengths, were inserted in a horizontal position 
over the surface of a pot prepared with drainage and white sand. 
This pot was placed under a hand-glass ina warm propagating 
bed, and kept moist. A few weeks afterwards the root-cuttings 
began to swell, and showed signs of budding, chiefly on the 
upper cut surface, as in Pl. iv. fig. 3. In most cases only one 
bud was developed, but in some instances two or more were 
produced. When several growing plants are observed the root 
can be cut through so as to form independent plants.” If this” 
has not before found a place in the columns of NATURE it may 
be deemed worthy of one, for, as the physiological botanist in 
charge of the Edinburgh Gardens observes—‘‘ Understanding 
that the Government intend to introduce the cultivation of this 
plant in India,” and ‘‘in order to meet the demand which in 
all likelihood will be made on nurserymen for plants of Cephaelis, 
it is well to know how it can be propagated independently of 
cuttings ” (Zé. p. 318). 
To give another instance. In an obituary notice of Dr. Fred. 
Welwitsch, the editor of a horticultural journal refers to the 
species of a plant which bears his name as follows :—‘‘ The 
[Woo. 7, 1872 7 
Welwitschia mirabilis is about as remarkable a plant as the — 
Rafflesia Arnoldi itself, and equally uncultivatable.’* 
simple fact is, the ill success at Kew, 
Edinburgh has had its chance. 
As a popular premier once defined dirt, so a weed is a plant 
multiplying in a wrong place. We may hope for a reversion of 
the sentence on Wé/witschia when ‘‘ cones with ripe seeds ” and 
* fine young plants ” have found their way to a botanic garden 
whose officers are not diverted from experimental work, not 
trammelled and obstructed by that wasteful weed—an overgrown 
herbarium, The native conditions of existence of the Tumboa 
may then and there be imitated so truly, with ample provision for 
the descent of the tap-root, as to enable visitors to see the plant 
alive, and Mr. McNab may even succeed in giving other horti- 
culturists the opportunity of multiplying specimens, 
From such instances—and they might be multiplied—of legiti- 
mate successes, where a botanic garden is content to use the 
herbarium in the contiguous metropolis, and has not the low 
ambition of setting up a’ competing one in‘ the garden itself, I 
infer an administrative advantage in maintaining the division of 
labour, which worked well in the days when the Government 
collections of live plants went to Kew, and those of dead plants 
to London. 
I do not merely suggest, but affirm, that the nation loses part, 
perhaps much, of the benefit of the liberal grants and aids it 
affords to its garden of living plants through the uncalled-for 
and unnecessary accumulations there of collections of dead 
plants and the resulting herbarian work. Dr. Hooker evades 
the concluding argument of my statement, takes a personal 
stand- point, assumes the tone of an injured individual, and 
deems it unfitting to notice what he is pleased to call an 
‘*insinuation.” 
He who is most sensitive as to himself is often least mindful of 
the feelings of others. If Dr. Hooker will read his answer to 
Q. 6661 (op. cit., p. 434), he may, at least ought to, have some 
sense of the pain he inflicted on fellow-servants of the State and 
collaborators in science, on men at least his equals, and one of > 
whom, in a recondite botanical problem, has shown himself his 
superior, 
The 
One cannot be sure till 
——-—- 
Statements of a,certain character may be made by one — 
careless as to cost in few words and at small loss of time. It , 
required the evidence occupying pp. 530, 531, of the published 
‘*Minutes” of the Scientific Commission to show the ground. 
lessness of the insinuation conveyed in the answer to Q. 6661, — 
I will not now trespass further on your valuable space, Bat 
* The Garden, Oct. 26, 1872, 
1 
A er 
