Oct. 24, 1872J 



NATURE 



517 



maintaining a country and a metropolitan department, 

 each with a herbarium^^s the most essential, but least 

 expensive of its adjuncts, may readily be demonstrated. 



"So far from desiring that the British Museum herbarium 

 should come to Kew, I should propose to recruit it from 

 that at Kew, which could be done to its very great 

 advantage. 



" Prof. Owen's approval of the saying of ' a great wit 

 and original thinker,' that 'the net result' of a herbarium 

 is the ' attaching barbarous binomials to dried foreign 

 weeds,' will not find an echo amongst those conversant 

 with the subject. Had it been otherwise, successive 

 ministers would hardly have tolerated the existence of 

 the Kew herbarium, or of that at the British Museum 

 either. 



" The disparaging remarks that foUow on the views of 

 his duties held by the late director, and on his perform- 

 ance of them, are not best dealt with by the counter as- 

 sertions of his son ; they are best disposed of by certain 

 passages in the Treasury Minute that follows Prof. 

 Owen's statements, and by the unanimous verdict of the 

 late director's countrymen and foreigners everywhere. 



" The suggestion is offered that an official inquiry should 

 be made of leading gardeners to ascertain ' the kind and 

 degree of information and aid which they derive or have 

 derived from the National Establishment.' 



" Tlie answer to this has already been given, in the ad- 

 dresses to the Premier by the Royal Horticultural Society 

 as a body, and separately by its Floral, Fruit, and Scien- 

 tific Committees ; and by the meeting of botanists and 

 horticulturists held in London ; and by the concurrent 

 evidence of gardening periodicals throughout this country. 



" The statement that the Royal Gardens had not fulfilled 

 their function of introducing new, rare, and beautiful 

 plants is best met by a reference to the pages and illus- 

 trations of the Botanical Magazine, a work that has 

 issued monthly (and without a month's intermission) from 

 Kew, ever since 1840, edited by the Director, and which 

 is devoted to new, rare, and interesting plants, the larger 

 proportion of which have flowered at Kew. 



" The passage relating to the avenue of deodars and 

 limes along the Syon vista, the formation of which is 

 censured as a failure at the cost of ' hundreds or five 

 hundreds ' of trees, is founded on a complete misappre- 

 hension. Without going into detail, it is sufficient to 

 state that not twenty deodars have been sacrificed, and 

 no limes at all. 



" The censuring of the Director for removing the arau- 

 carias from Richmond Park to Kew is equally founded on 

 a misapprehension. These araucarias were twice offered 

 to Kew before they were accepted ; they stood in a private 

 piece of ground, whence their removal was considered by 

 their possessor to be a necessity ; and the alternative of 

 removal to Kew was their destruction. 



" My predecessor is censured for neglect of the great 

 araucaria, which, it is implied, is consequently inferior to 

 that of Dropmore. The facts are as follows : — 



" This araucaria, with four others, was brought to Kew 

 in 1 796, and kept in a greenhouse. 



" In 1S08 it was planted out in a poor sandy soil, and 

 being supposed to be tender, was enclosed in a wooden 

 house for many months in the year, in consequence of 

 which its growth was checked, and it was rendered so 

 weak that it was almost killed in 1 838. 



" It was not till the late Director took office in 1840 that 

 the house was abandoned, good soil given to it, and other 

 means taken (which have been sedulously repeated ever 

 since) to encourage its growth. 



" It is now a striking object 30 feet high and 90 in girth 

 of the branches ; and if not nearly so handsome an ob 

 ject as the Dropmore araucaria, this is partly due to the 

 fact that tlie Dropmore tree was planted out at once, in a 

 soil and situation as admirably adapted to araucarias as 

 those of Kew are naturally unsuite '. to them ; and partly 



to the fact, probably unknown to Prof. Owen, that there 

 are two very distinct forms of this species, a conical, and 

 a round-headed, of which the Dropmore specimen belong! 

 to one, and the Kew specimen to the other. 



" Of the other four plants, one is that now at Dropmore ; 

 a second was killed by cold at Kew early in the century ; 

 the third was given to Sir Joseph Banks at Spring Grove ; 

 and the fourth at a later period, to Prince Albert, and 

 taken to Windsor. « 



" In the contrast drawn between the herbarium establish- 

 ments at the British Museum and at Kew, it is stated 

 that the staff of the former consists of three officers, with 

 aggregate salaries of 850/., and ' that their time is exclu- 

 sively given to the duties for which they are paid;' 

 whereas the aggregate salaries of the three herbarium 

 officers .at Kew is 750/., and that one is Professor of 

 Botany in University College, and another a lecturer at a 

 London Medical School. 



" I am surprised that Prof. Owen should be unaware that 

 one of his own three officers is botanist to the Royal 

 Agricultural Society, and another a lecturer at a London 

 Medical School, and editor of a valuable botanical 

 journal. 



"Nor does Prof. Owen in his comparison take into con- 

 sideration that the Kew herbarium is open from 8.30 a.m. 

 till 5 P.M. in winter, and 6 p.m. in summer, whereas the 

 British Museum herbarium is open only from 10 to 4 in 

 winter, and 10 to 5 in summer ; as also that the Kew officers 

 have not only the keep of the largest and most frequented 

 herbarium in the world, but of a very large library, and 

 have the duty of naming all the plants throughout the 

 gardens and museums, together with many other ^duties 

 that do not fall upon the British Museum officers. 



" The fact is, that the exigencies of this establishment 

 require that the herbarium sliould be open during thai; 

 long period, but the officers are not required to be in 

 attendance, and at their work, for more than seven hours 

 daily throughout the year. 



"Those seven hours (and to their honour be it said, often 

 many more) are devoted exclusively to the duties of their 

 respective offices. 



" That the officers both of the British Museum and of 

 Kew should be chosen to conduct the very brief profes- 

 sional and other duties which they perform elsewhere (at 

 their own time), is both honourable to themselves, and in 

 many ways advantageous to the establishments with which 

 they are officially connected, always assuming that these 

 vocations do not interfere with their working hours at 

 Kew, and at the British Museum, or with their powers of 

 work during those hours. 



" The statement that there are at Kew ' a special curator 

 of the museum, &c., and an assistant at 315/. per annum,' 

 is an enor. 



" There is but one curator for the three museums, and his 

 salary is 120/., rising to 150/., without a house or any other 

 advantage ; he has no assistant, and never had one. 



" The last of Prof. Owen's statements to which I shall 

 allude are the following, which I quote vi-ibatiin : — 



'"Dr. Hooker has been enabled to publish, or aid in the 

 publication of, 130 volumes on botanical subjects. . . . 

 " ' To the extent or proportion in which the Director's 

 time has been diverted from the immediate aims of the 

 Royal Gardens to this foundation of his scientific fame, 

 the proportion of his salary of 800/. per annum must also 

 be placed to his credit of the superaddition of the dead 

 plants to the Botanical Department under the Board of 

 Works, competing with the Botanical Department under 

 the Trustees of the British Museum.' 



" The first statement in this extract has no foundation in 

 fact ; it would ill befit me to notice the insinuation con- 

 tained in the last. 



" (Signed) 



" Jos. D. Hooker, Du-cctor 

 •■•■ Royal Gardens, Kew, Aug. 6, 1872" 



