45° 



NATURE 



\Oct. 3, 1872 



undesirable, and, in my opinion, practically impossible. 

 No botanist has so extensive an acquaintance with the 

 vegetable kingdom as to be able to make " a close study," 

 in his necessary work, of every group of plants he may be 

 naming or arranging ; he must in many groups make a 

 "rapid determination without dissection." If Mr. licn- 

 tham's distinction were in force, and the two herbaria he 

 proposes existed, he would himself, when rapidly naming 

 some of the important collections which have passed 

 through his hands, have often been driven from the great 

 scientific collection to work in his single specimen her- 

 barium with the " general naturalist," " the palaeontolo- 

 gist," and " the mere amateur." Every systematic botanist 

 is at first, and more or less all along, a " comparer " of 

 plants. The man who begins as a mere comparer natu- 

 rally becomes a close student under the influence of the 

 collection he is consulting, and the workers he encounters 

 in that consultation. 



4. Mr. Bcntham's single specimen herbarium is chiefly 

 intended for the paUcontologist, and in addition he pro- 

 poses to provide him with " separate collections of leaves 

 and fruits, . . so arranged as to enable them to be rapidly 

 glanced over," and these, it is added, " would be most 

 useful." No better testimony to the utter worthlcssness 

 of such materials for the purpose proposed can be adduced 

 than the criticisms of Mr. lientham himself, on the evi- 

 dence for the existence of the natural order Proteacca in 

 Europe, from leaves found in Tertiary strata. Mr. Ben- 

 tham was specially fitted to deal critically with the hun- 

 dred fossil species referred to this order, as he had just 

 made the analysis and detailed descriptions of between 

 five and six hundred Protiiuwe. The Order is also the best 

 fitted to test the value of the leaf characters on which the 

 fossils had been referred to it, because, as he testifies, it " is 

 one of the most distinct and most clearly defined amongst 

 phanerogams," and is without " a single plant intermediate 

 in structure between that and the nearest allied orders." 

 With regard, then, to the leaves of this order, Mr. Ben- 

 tham says, " I must admit that there is a certain general 

 facii-s in the foliage of this order that enables us in most, 

 but not in all cases, to refer to it with tolerable accuracy 

 — leafy specimens known to have come from a proteaceous 

 country, even without flowers or fruit — but as to detached 

 leaves, 1 do not know of a single one which, in outline or 

 venation, is exclusively characteristic of the order, or of 

 any one of its genera." I cannot reconcile this declaration 

 by Mr. Bentham to the Fellows of the Linnean Society 

 as their President in May 1S70, with the statement pub- 

 lished by him within a year thereafter, that such a collec- 

 tion of detached leaves not for a limited and exception- 

 ally defined order, but for the whole vegetable kingdom, 

 " would be most useful." 



I must further observe that Mr. Bentham has overlooked 

 the fact that a large proportion of fossil plants have 

 been determined from their internal structure, that is, on 

 evidence which no mere herbarium, however extensive, 

 can supply, far less one for rapidly determining 

 plants without dissection, or a collection of detached 

 leaves. The pateontologist requires the most extensive 

 collections possible for his work, and he must be a work- 

 ing zoologist or botanist. All such work done by mere 

 " geologists " and on such data as Mr. Bentham proposes 

 to supply would always deserve strong condemnation. 



1 1. The matters flowing out of these statements 

 In considering the matters naturally flowing out of Mr. 

 Bentham's paper, and the views I have now expressed, I 

 venture, firstly, to submit the reasons which make it 

 desirable in my opinion to retain the two herbaria as 

 separate and independent institutions. 



I. The two herbaria already exist, and are to a con- 

 siderable extent parallel collections. Mr. Bentham, whose 

 extensive private herbarium formed the foundation of the 

 public herbarium at Kew, declared, in 1858, " that a great 



portion of the additions to the Banksian herbarium since 

 .Sir Joseph's death are duplicates of those already at 

 Kew." As the Banksian plants form less than a quarter of 

 those now existing in the British Museum herbarium, the 

 duplicates would be, according to Mr. Bentham, about 

 three-fourths of the whole. Sir William Hooker, also, 

 whose large collections form the great bulk of the Kew 

 herbarium, testified, in 1S58, that "the Museum speci- 

 mens are to a great extent duplicates of those at Kew." 

 And the present Director of Kew Gardens corroborated 

 this statement at that time. In i860 Sir William Hooker 

 further said, in reference to the transfer of the National 

 Herbarium to Kew as affecting the herbarium there, " To 

 IJr. Hooker and myself it literally and truly can be a 

 matter of no consequence." 



2. The two herbaria have been under different manage- 

 ment, and to some extent express different results of " the 

 close study of plants." The important bearing of this 

 consideration on botanical science in Britain can scarcely 

 be overestimated. One practical illustration may be ad- 

 duced. The most varied views arc entertained by botanists 

 as to the limits of a species, and consequently as to what 

 constitutes a duplicate. Thus, in the case of the indigenous 

 flowering plants of Britain, Mr. Bentham considers them 

 to form 1,274 species ; Dr. Hooker, in his recent Flora, 

 makes 1,473 species ; Prof. Babington increases the 

 number to 1,648 species; while a botanist adopting the 

 views which Jordan and some continental authors have 

 applied to local floras, would make them three or four 

 times more numerous than even the last estimate. It is 

 quite obvious that these different botanists have each very 

 different notions as to " duplicates," and that a distribu- 

 tion undert.aken hy Mr. Bentham would certainly result in 

 the loss to the herb.arium of plants which Dr. Hooker 

 would consider good species, and the "duplicates" distri- 

 buted by Mr. Bentham or Dr. Hooker would include 

 numerous plants v/hich would be of the utmost value in 

 M. Jordan's eyes. The two herbaria, existing, as they do, 

 under different directors, to a considerable extent counter- 

 act these and other analogous evils. 



3. The objects of the two herbaria are fundamentally 

 different, and in as far as they fulfil these objects, they are 

 employed for totally different purposes. The National 

 Herbarium at the British Museum was founded in 1827 

 for the use of the scientific botanist ; while that at Kew 

 was, as Dr. Hooker says, " originally maintained ex- 

 pressly for the use of the gardens." This was the primary 

 ol^ject for which Sir W. J. Hooker accepted the private 

 herljarium of Mr. Bentham in 1S55. Before that year the 

 gardens had been fulfilling their proper functions without 

 a scientific herbarium attached to them. The two editions 

 of the " Hortus Kcwensis " are the best testimony to the 

 efficiency of the gardens, and to the value of the collec- 

 tions brought together there under the Aitons. No 

 herbarium of any kind, 1 believe, existed at the gardens 

 during their time. The Banksian Herbarium was often 

 and for a long time systematically used for naming the 

 Kew plants ; and the strictly scientific portion of the 

 " Hortus Kewcnsis " was the work of Solander, 

 Dryander, and Brown, the successive curators of the 

 Banksian Herbarium. Even Sir W. J. Hooker, the suc- 

 cessor of the younger Alton, who raised the gardens to 

 their present eminence, had no public herbarium from the 

 time of his appointment in 1S41 to 1S55. It is, therefore, 

 evident that a great scientific herbarium is not a necessity 

 to the efficiency of the gardens at Kew. 



It is, however, certain that such a herbarium as Sir W. 

 J. Hooker and Ur. Hooker desired, that is, one sufficient 

 to enable the officials to name the plants in the gardens, 

 would be a most useful adjunct at Kew, as it would save 

 the great waste of time which would be incurred in con- 

 sulting a herbarium at a distance. Inasmuch as growing 

 plants arc, to the extent that they are developed, perfect, 

 and permit thorough examination, it is obvious that the 



