96 TORREYA 



paths of life led them away from Trifolium, always their common meeting" 

 ground. Kennedy was never to move his headquarters again and Heller too 

 remained for the most part in Butte County. It was incidentally also the death 

 knell to the publication of "Muhlenbergia," and to ambitiously planned mono- 

 graphs of Trifolium and Lupinus. 



Division of Agronomy 

 University of California 

 Davis, California 



Report on Bomb Damage to Botanical Material in England 



American botanists will probably be interested in the following excerpts- 

 from letters received by one of our members from Dr. Nicholas Polunin of 

 Oxford University. 



Dec. 7, 1943. "With regard to the English Botanical gardens I believe 

 I am right in saying that they have sustained comparatively little damage 

 from bombs, though I think I read somewhere of damage to a valuable fern 

 house somewhere in Scotland other than Edinburgh. Here in Oxford we have 

 fortunately escaped so far but Kew lost a good deal of glass and some plants 

 early on. You doubtless heard of the serious damage to the Botanical Depart- 

 ment of the British Museum? Most of the material was fortunately saved but 

 several groups of Monocots were, I fear, considerably reduced. Fortunately all 

 type specimens had been removed. I understand that this had not been done in 

 Berlin and that there everything has been lost, which is indeed a tragic blow 

 for our subject." 



March 2, 1945. ". . . . we remain undamaged in Oxford where our most 

 important ancient Herbaria have been below ground in safety since the sum- 

 mer of 1939. Kew have had some near flying bombs and, latterly, rockets, but 

 so far as I know, no further serious damage. The British Museum of Natural 

 History had a very near-miss flying bomb last summer after which my pub- 

 lisher, Leonard Hill, and I carted off the whole of their Arctic Botanical Col- 

 lections to safety in his large car, since when there has been no further damage 

 to the Museum. That bomb was indeed a near miss which the roof-spotter 

 thought was coming right into the centre of the museum ; but it veered off in 

 the end and fell just in front of the main entrance which was, of course, 

 badly blasted, as was practically every pane of glass in the place ! Permanent 

 damage to the botanical collections, however, seems to have been slight and, 

 so far as I am aware, the same is true of such other botanical collections up and 

 down the country as have been at all affected. Here we still have much of the 

 Kew material and staff evacuated." 



