680 REPORT— 1886. 



our first British botanist, who refers to it in his ' Herbal,' published iu 1551. Turner 

 may have been already acquainted with this method of preserving plants, for in his 

 enforced absence from England he studied at Bologna under Luca Ghini, the first 

 professor of Botany in Europe, who, there is reason to believe, originated the prac- 

 tice of maldng herbaria. Ghini's pupils, Aldrovandus and Csesalpinus, formed 

 extensive collections. Caspar Bauhin, whose ' Prodromus ' was the first attempt to 

 digest the literature of botany, left a considerable herbarium, still preserved at 

 Basle. No collection of English plants is known to exist older than the middle of 

 the seventeenth century ; a volume containing some British and many exotic 

 plants collected in the year 1647 was some years ago acquired by the British 

 Museum. Towards the end of that century great activity was manifested in the 

 collection of plants, not only in our own country, but in every district of the 

 globe visited by travellers. The labours of Ray and Sloaue, of Petiver and 

 Plukenet are manifest not only in the works which they published, but in the 

 collections that they made, which were purchased by the country in 1759 when 

 the museum of Sir Hans Sloane became the nucleus of the now extensive collec- 

 tions of the British Museum. The most important of these collections in regard to 

 British plants is the herbarium of Adam Buddie, collected nearly two hundred 

 years ago, and containing an extensive series which formed the basis of a British 

 Flora, that unhappily for science was never published, though it still exists in 

 manuscript. Other collections of British plants of the same age, but less complete, 

 supplement those of Buddie : these various materials are in such a state of preser- 

 vation as to permit of the most careful comparison with living plants, and they 

 show that the two centuries which have elapsed since their collection have not 

 modified in any particular the species contained in them. The early collectors 

 contemplated merely the preservation of a single specimen of each species ; conse- 

 quently the data for an exhaustive comparison of the indigenous flora of Britain 

 at the beginning of last century with that of the present are very imperfect as com- 

 pared with those which we shall hand down to our successors for their use. 



The collections made in other regions of the world in the seventeenth century, 

 and included in the extensive herbarium of Sir Hans Sloane, are frequently being 

 examined side by side with plants of our own daj', but they do not show any 

 peculiarities that distinguish them from recent collections. If any changes are 

 taking place in plants, it is certain that the three hundred years during which their 

 dried remains have been preserved in herbaria have been too short to exhibit 

 them. 



Beyond the time of those early herbaria the materials which we owe in any 

 way to the intervention of man have been preserved without any regard to their 

 scientific interest. They consist mainly of materials used iu building or for sepul- 

 ture. The woods employed in mediaeval buildings present no peculiarities by which 

 they can be distinguished from existing woods ; neither do tlie woods met with in 

 Roman and British villages and burying-places. From a large series collected by 

 General Pitt-Rivers in extensive explorations carried on by him on the site of a vil- 

 lage which had been occupied by the British before and after the appearance of the 

 Romans, we find that the woods chiefly used by them were oak, birch, hazel, and 

 willow, and at the latter period of occupation of the village the wood of the 

 Spanish chestnut (Castanea vulgaris, Lamk.) was so extensively employed that it 

 must have been introduced and grown in the district. The gravel beds in the 

 north of London, explored by Mr. W. G. Smith for the palajolithic implements 

 in them, contained also fragments of willow and birch, and the rhizomes of 

 Osmunda regalis, L. 



The most important materials, however, for the comparison of former vegeta- 

 tion of a known age with that of our own day have been supplied by the specimens 

 which have been obtained from the tombs of the ancient Egyptians." Until recently . 

 these consisted mainly of fruits and seeds. These were all more or less carbonised, 

 because the former rifling of the tombs had exposed them to the air. Ehrenberg, 

 who accompanied Yon Minutoli in his Egyptian expedition, determined the seeds 

 which he had collected, but as he himself doubted the antiquity of some of the 

 materials on which he reported, the scientific value of his enumeration is destroyed. 



