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ne ee THE HONORARY CURATOR OF 
E ECONOMIC COLLECTIONS 
Dr. N. L. Britron, DrrectTor-1n-CHigr. 
Dear Sir: TJ have the honor to submit the following report 
for the year 1906 
The principal results of the year’s work may be summar- 
ized in the statement that 651 specimens have been added to 
the collections and a large part of those already in the cases 
have been rearranged. 
The specimens added include many of the most important, 
from a scientific as well as an economic view-point, in our 
possession. / Early in the year, we received from Messrs. 
Merck & Company, of Darmstadt and New York, a collection 
prepared in the first named city, which has been the subject 
of discussion and correspondence for several years. The 
collection includes a set of rare drugs, many of which we 
had not been able previously to secure either by donation or 
purchase, and a very large and important set of proximate 
principles of plants, and other plant-constituents and products. 
An account of this collection has already been published 
(Journal New York Botanical Garden 7: 140. 1906). 
Many of these constituents are exceedingly rare and very 
valuable, pecuniarily as well as educationally. The donors 
very generously supplied the specimens in special exhibition 
vials, which admit of their examination to the best advantage. 
These specimens will prove of permanent value not only for 
exhibition purposes, but for supplying test material for com- 
parison in any future investigations which may be conducted 
in our laboratories. The collection is at present arranged in 
one of the cases of the western wing, where it is necessarily 
crowded. It is contemplated to distribute it, as soon as our 
case room will permit, through a number of cases, and to 
place beside each constituent, or set of constituents, a speci- 
men of the drug or plant-part from which it is extracted. 
Of the other additions, special mention may be made of a 
