BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 69 



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interest to Australians. We would have liked our fathers to have 

 had the privilege of seeing them ; shall the privilege be denied to 

 the living and only be bestowed on a generation yet to be born ? 

 With all respect to the eminent specialists forming the scientific 

 staff of the British Museum, we feel sure that these manuscripts 

 must contain observations which can only be fully interpreted and 

 appreciated by Australians." 



It would seem that our Australian friends have an exaggerated 

 estimate of the MSS. in the possession of the Museum, both as to 

 their value and extent ; the note as to Solander's supposed Journal 

 (see Journ. Bot. 1906, p. 71) illustrates what I mean. So far as 

 Solander's MSS. are concerned, they consist solely of descriptions 

 of plants in terms as shown by those already published — the greater 

 number — largely obsolete, and it is difficult to see who would benefit 

 by their publication. It is a straining of language to call these 

 technical descriptions u priceless historical documents, " and I am 

 at a loss to understand what Mr. Maiden means by the suggestion 

 that "any considerations of nomenclature of species 1 ' could be 

 advanced M as a reason for sl keeping them back.' 1 With regard 

 to Eobert Brown's MSS. again, it seems doubtful whether at the 

 present time there would be adequate gain in publishing descrip- 

 tions a hundred years old of plants most if not all of which must be 

 familiar to botanists. It would certainly be undesirable to print 

 the large number of unpublished names which occur in both 

 Solander's and Brown's MSS., and I am sorry to see that Mr. 

 Maiden defends the practice.* When distributing Brown's her- 

 barium we were most careful not to send out any unpublished 

 names, and the same plan was adopted with the set of Banks and 

 Solander plants sent to Sydney. 



I am the more surprised that Mr. Maiden should refer again to 

 the supposed u keeping back " of the Brown MSS., because in this 

 Journal for 1903 (p. 252) I dealt with the similar complaint con- 

 tained in his Revision of Eucalyptus (part i. p. 20) where he assumes 

 the M suppression of these descriptions," and expresses a doubt 

 " whether this suppression eventually met with the acquiescence of 

 Eobert Brown himself, or whether he was controlled in this respect 

 by superior authority." I am unable even to guess at what Mr. 

 Maiden intends to suggest by his references to " suppression " and 

 to Brown's being "controlled by superior authority " ; but there 

 is, as I said before, absolutely no ground for supposing that any- 

 one but Brown himself was responsible for the non-publication of 

 his MSS. 



The value and bearing of the Solander and Brown MSS. can 

 only be fully appreciated if they are correlated with the specimens 

 to which they refer, and this can only be done at the National Her- 

 barium. Would it not be possible for some competent Australian 

 botanist to come over and see for himself what material exists, and 

 how it can best be employed ? It must, I think, rest with the 

 Colony to decide whether •« the privilege [shall] be deuied to the 

 living and only bestowed on a generation yet to be born." 



Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, xxvii. 700. 



