50 REPORT ON NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1885. 



terials for exhibition lias steadily progressed. The space in the south- 

 east court of the Museum building is occupied by specimens belonging- to 

 this department which have been turned over to the Museum, and in 

 this court the collections are i^repared for installation. 



17. DIVISION OF BOTANY. 



Departments of Fosssil and Recent Plants. 



Prof. Lester F. Ward, curator, reports tliat the work of his depart- 

 ment was exclusively confined to fossil plants until near the close of the 

 year 1884, and no collections of recent plants were received until Febru- 

 ary last, when rooms were assigned to him for the purpose, and the " Joad 

 Collection" from Kew was placed in his charge. With this Professor 

 Ward joined his own collection, consisting of nearly five thousand spe- 

 cies. The two collections combined form a nucleus for a future herba- 

 rium of not less than fourteen thousand species, represented by twice 

 that number of herbarium specimens. He submits the following sug- 

 gestions : 



All botanical collections have for many years been turned over to the Department 

 of Agriculture to be eared for by the botanist of that Department. When, in 1881, 1 

 was requested to take charge of the fossil plants of the National Museum, and con- 

 sented to do so, I perceived at once the great inconvenience to the Department of Fossil 

 Plants of this arrangement. The collections of fossil plants were largely undeter- 

 mined and required to be studied and identified. Most of them were from recent for- 

 mations, and represented types of vegetation still living, requiring constant compar- 

 ison with the recent' forms to be seen in herbaria. Even the installation and care of 

 those that were named necessitated such comparison, and the difficulties of this nature 

 that were encountered were very great. It was rarely possible to carry the fossils to 

 the Department of Agriculture, and as it was usually necessary to search through 

 large families of plants, the temporary transportation of the botanical specimens was 

 still nwre impracticable. I therefore early began to urge the establishment of a per- 

 manent collection at the Museum of the plants still growing in America and other 

 countries where the catalogues of fossil plants were likely to occur. 



While I am highly gratified at the progress in this direction already made as re- 

 ported above, still it must be evident to you that ouly a beginning has thus far been 

 made, and that the present collection of living plants is still very inadequate. The 

 Joad collection represents chiefly the flora of Southern Europe, which is widely dif- 

 ferent from all Tertiary floras, and especially so from the Cretaceous and Tertiary 

 floras of North America. The collections that I have made are exclusively American, 

 and, in so far as they go, are valuable aids to the study of American fossil plants; but 

 they are, of course, too limited in extent to be trusted in critical cases. The parts of 

 the world next after those in North America with which our fossil floras most closely 

 agree are Eastern Asia, the East Indies, Australia, and South Africa, and from all 

 these vast regions scarcely any representatives are to be found in the present her- 

 barium of the National Museum. It is therefore highly desirable as a necessary ad- 

 junct to the Department of Fossil Plants, and aside from the still greater desideratum 

 of establishing a truly national herbarium at the Museum, that all reasonable efforts 

 be made to enlarge and enrich the botanical collections. 



Tlie routine work of the department of botany has been entrusted 

 to Mr. Frank H. Knowlton, who, in addition to identifying and install- 

 ing the material, has devoted much time to bibliographical research 



