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X. 



THE LEVINGE HEEBARIUM. 



By T. JOHNSON, D.Sc, F.L.S., Professor of Botany in the Royal 

 College of Science, and Keeper of the Botanical Collections, 

 National Museum, Dublin, and MISS M. C. KNOWLES. 



[Bead, June 16; Received for Publication, June 26; Published, October 29, 1903.] 



The late Mr. H. C. Levinge, D.L., of Knock Drin Castle, 

 Westmeath, left by will his herbarium of ferns to the Eoyal 

 Dublin Society in 1896. As is well known, the Society now 

 possesses no collections of its own ; and in consequence, Mr. E. J. 

 Moss, F.C.S., the Registrar, offered the herbarium to the 

 Botanical Collections of the National Museum, which the Society 

 had done so much, up to 1877, to create. The collection is a 

 most valuable one, and consists of more than 4000 sheets of 

 specimens of ferns from British India, Ceylon, and nearly all 

 parts of the world. Mr. Levinge also left a herbarium of British 

 Flowering Plants which remained in the possession of his 

 daughter, Mrs. Constance Smyth, whose name, as Miss Levinge, 

 appears often in the records of finds of Irish plants. In 1902, this 

 lady offered the collection to the National Museum. It contains 

 some 2000 sheets of specimens from various parts of Great Britain, 

 and in addition more than 1000 sheets from Ireland, chiefly from 

 County Westmeath. Following the Irish Topographical Botany 

 of Mr. E. Lloyd Praeger, the total flora of Ireland (flowering 

 plants and vascular cryptogams) numbers 1138 species and sub- 

 species. The value of the Levinge Irish herbarium will be 

 appreciated when it is mentioned that it contains specimens of 

 1066 of these species, 619 being from County Westmeath. In 

 the years 1894, 1895, and 1896, Mr. Levinge himself gave an 

 account in the Irish Naturalist, accompanied by a list, of the most 

 interesting species then known in County Westmeath. In the 

 present paper the object is to record the species of which specimens 



