74 
by rival steamship companies and rival 
railroads to Lake Nyanza, is likely to be 
beneficial in opening up to civilization more 
rapidly larger areas of territory than could 
otherwise be reached ; but in the scientific 
publication of the flora of the region 
rivalry is likely to result in greater harm 
than good, for a considerable portion of 
the work of two independent sets of 
workers is likely to be duplicated. In the 
matter of building railroads the British are 
likely to outstrip their rivals, but in the 
careful and thoughtful working-out of the 
great problems presented by the flora the 
more philosophic German is almost sure to 
make the better showing. The collection 
at Kew is so extensive that English bot- 
anists have too often neglected the oppor- 
tunity to compare types at other herbaria 
easily within their reach and have some- 
times belittled work that has been accom- 
plished elsewhere ; such self-importance al- 
ways suffers q decline, and in this the Kew 
botanists might have learned a lesson from 
the history of American botany in the last 
quarter of a century. But there is hope 
for better things, for one of the Kew bot- 
anists during the summer of 1897 made a 
visit to Berlin to compare the types in that 
herbarium, the first Kew botanist that has 
visited the Berlin collection since Ben- 
tham’s time, thirty years ago. Itis tobe 
hoped that this visit will result in opening 
the eyes of English botanists to the facts 
recognized everywhere else, that more care- 
ful and philosophical floristic work is being 
accomplished at Berlin even with more 
scanty materials in the collection. Kew, 
too, is learning how to introduce into her 
staff men of university training more fa- 
miliar with modern ideas of botanical study. 
Besides the floras above noted, the most 
important work issued from Kew is Genera 
Plantarum, by Bentham and Hooker, which 
for the first time brought together compact 
Latin descriptions of all the genera of 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 238 
flowering plants. It was commenced in 
1862 and was completed in 1883, only a 
short time before the death of its veteran 
author. This work has not only made pos- 
sible the study of distant floras of the earth 
and stimulated the botanical exploration of 
unknown regions, but has laid the founda- 
tions on which the more recent as well as 
the more logical and complete arrangement 
has been developed under the editorship of 
Professor Engler, at Berlin, Die natiwrlichen 
Pflanzenfamilien. 
As asupplement to the Genera Plantarum, 
the botanical world is further indebted to 
Kew for the Index Kewensis in four massive 
quarto volumes, with the names all the 
flowering plants that had been described 
up to 1885, with citation of place and date 
of publication and geographic distribu- 
tion. This enormous piece of bibliographic 
work, involving hundreds of thousands of 
references, was accomplished under B. Day- 
ton Jackson, Secretary of the Linnean 
Society, who spent ten years in its comple- 
tion, the expense being met by funds left for 
the purpose by Charles Darwin. 
Such is Kew with its beautiful lawns, its 
delightful shade, its historic associations, 
its immense collection of cultivated plants, 
and its wonderful activity in the direction 
of botanical research. Botanical gardens 
in America can never have the historic as- 
sociations of their English rivals, but in 
this country they will be free from most of 
the conservative inheritances with which 
the older gardens are hampered. While 
they can never possess the ancient types of 
the early explorers, they can and do possess 
the equally valuable modern types of more 
recently discovered species, and their col- 
lections will in time become just as repre- 
sentative and more complete for the Amer- 
ican flora at least than the one at Kew. 
Besides their philanthropic and educational 
value, which is chiefly confined to the im- 
mediate vicinity in which they are located, 
