244 
It will not I hope be considered improper if I venture 
(entirely, of course, on my own responsibility), to make 
some remarks with the view of aiding those who are not 
botanists to form an opinion upon the matter. 
In the first place it may be well to give some notion 
of the nature of a public herbarium and the purposes it 
serves. Most persons are aware that with a little care 
specimens of almost any plant can be dried under pressure, 
so as to give, even to those who are not accustomed to 
study such specimens, some notion of what the plant is 
like in the fresh state. To a professed botanist they yield 
of course a great deal more information. 
A herbarium then consists of a collection of dried 
plants. Whatever may be the plan adopted by private 
individuals, it is absolutely necessary in a public her- 
barium that the specimens should be securely stuck down 
upon sheets of paper, in order that they may bear frequent 
handling without injury. This does not, however, prevent 
the detachment under proper supervision of such frag- 
ments as can be spared and are requisite for scientific in- 
vestigation. The sheets on which the specimens are 
fastened are placed in loose covers, and these are arranged 
in proper classificatory order on the shelves of cabinets 
which are made to hold them. 
Any botanist interested in any particular group of 
plants, and visiting a well-worked herbarium, has only 
to go to the proper place to find everything that the 
herbarium contains belonging to that group ready to his 
hand, and in a state suitable for study. Such a result 
is not, however, attained without immense labour on the 
part of those who have charge of the herbarium. Fresh 
accessions of plants have contiaually to be examined in 
detail before the proper positions for their intercalation in 
the arranged collection can be determined. 
A public herbarium derives its additions from three 
sources :—gifts, exchange, and purchase. The first in- 
cludes, besides collections given by the government de- 
partments, at whose instance they have been made, sup- 
plies coming from private individuals. At Kew the Garden 
and the Herbarium benefit in common by the extensive 
correspondence carried on in every part of the globe with 
persons of every grade. Contributions, both large and 
small, are constantly arriving of living and dried plants, 
seeds, and specimens unsuitable for herbarium purposes 
but which find their place in the Museums. This corre- 
spondence it has required a long period to organise, and it 
needs no small exertion to continue and extend it. I 
conceive that it is, putting aside all others, a very strong 
argument for the maintenance of a herbarium at Kew, 
that it participates, as no other herbarium in this country 
could do, in the results of a correspondence which must 
necessarily be kept up for the purposes of the Garden, 
and which indeed could hardly be carried on elsewhere 
for the advantage of a herbarium alone, to anything like 
the same extent. Moreover the correspondents of Kew 
constantly send dried plants to be named, besides making 
demands for every kind of information which nothing 
but a herbarium and library on the spot could enable them 
to be supplied with. 
The dried plants which are received at Kew from 
different sources necessarily include a large number of 
duplicates, that is, of specimens not needed for the her- 
barium. These, however, are not wasted, but are sent 
from Kew to various establishments with which exchanges 
can be effected. This is a most important matter, because 
the authentically named specimens of foreign botanists 
which are received in exchange are far more useful for 
purposes of comparison than any figures or descriptions. 
The uses of a large herbarium are in the main two. In 
the first place it supplies the material for purely scientific 
investigations, both with regard to the structure and classi- 
fication of plants as well as with regard to their geo- 
graphical relations and the problem of how their world 
distribution has come to be what it is, But a herbarium 
NATURE 
pet ¢ 
. 
[ Fan. 30, 1873 
is also most important on purely utilitarian grounds. An 
immense number of important products are derived from 
the vegetable kingdom, and it is very necessary to have 
exact and precise information as to the plants which 
produce these. Dried plants preserved in herbaria are 
standards of reference in comparison with which the 
names of specimens can be accurately determined. Bota- 
nical names have a universal currency, and therefore 
obviate all the divergencies and confusion of those which 
are merely local and vernacular. Horticulturists more- 
over look to those who have access to herbaria to 
guarantee the correctness of the nomenclature of garden 
lants. ; 
: Besides the herbarium at Kew there is the older one be- 
longing to the British Museum, It is still in a measure 
sub judice what is to be the future position of these two 
institutions. That the. Kew Herbarium should not be 
severed from the Garden is the all but unanimous judg- 
ment of those who are best qualified to give an opinion. 
With respect to the British Museum Herbarium there is 
greater difference. Some botanists have wished to see 
the valuable type specimens which it contains added to 
those at Kew, just as they might wish, if it were in their 
power, to condense there what is best in some of the 
leading foreign herbaria. In my opinion the transference 
to Kew of any portion of the British Museum collections 
would be very undesirable. The British Museum speci- 
mens are mounted on paper of a very different size, and 
the sheets could not be cut down without impairing their 
authenticity. Moreover, at the British Museum there is 
an extensive series ot ante-Linnean herbaria most valuable 
from a historical point of view, but not otherwise available 
for study, and these would, on that account, be out of 
place at Kew. Again, with collections so combustible as 
those of dried plants, it is all but imperative to divide the 
risk of losing the whole national accumulations in one 
conflagration. 
The two Herbaria have also two well-marked but 
distinct fields of activity open to them, Let the Kew 
Herbarium remain, as at present, to be used for the 
varied ends of the Kew establishment, and by such 
students as are engaged in important works, as origi- 
nal memoirs and colonial or forest floras executed for 
the Government. They would be willing to gain, as they 
do now by the distance from town, tranquillity from the 
incursion of visitors less permanently occupied with 
botanical pursuits. Then the British Museum collections 
(which, if it were possible, it would be a convenient arrange- 
ment to retain in Bloomsbury) would serve still for persons 
who would use them rather for reference than for con- 
tinuous study, although this also would not be pre- 
cluded. It must, however, be admitted that they are 
capable of very great improvement even for purposes 
of reference, and it would be very desirable to this end 
that the Kew and Bloomsbury establishments should be 
brought into some sort of amicable relation. I will givea 
few instances quite arbitrarily selected from my own ex- 
perience, which will show how very far behind the British 
Museum Herbarium is in completeness to that of Kew. 
The Indo-Malayan genus Dipterocarpus is represented 
in the former by 17 sheets, including 10 species, in the 
latter by 116 sheets, including 31 species; the South 
African genus Svafedia, consisting of plants very difficult 
to dry, in the former by 4 sheets of 3 species, in the 
latter by 48 sheets of 25 species ; lastly the Tasmanian 
Athrotaxis (Conifere), of which one specis is to be 
found in nurserymen’s catalogues, is represented at Kew 
by 16 sheets, illustrating all the three known species ; while 
at the British Museum I have not succeeded in discover- 
ing a single specimen in the arranged collection at all. 
But a very large portion of the plants at the British Mu- 
seum are practically inaccessible. Unfastened on paper, 
and much in the state in which they were received from the 
collectors, except a rough geographical distribution into 
