MINUTES OF EVIDENCE 



21 



'xaste both their time and their money. That is the 

 general feeling I have in the matter. Personally, I 

 should much prefer for any kind of botxaniual work to 

 go to one place only, and to be able to there settle the 

 work at once. Very often a correspondent wishes to 

 get an answer for a lecture or something of that sort, 

 and it means a considerable waste of time to go to two 

 places. But as far as I can obserw, if you ask my 

 ■opinion as an opinion, I generally see the same botanical 

 workers at both places. Of course, occasionally you see 

 •one who does not go to both places, wliich intimates to 

 me that they are obliged to work at the two places 

 instead of the one. 



380. Does that strengthen you in your view that it 

 would be desirable if it could be arranged, that the 

 collections should be in one place? — I think so, cer- 

 tainly. 



381. In fact, would you go so far as to say that that 

 is a change which you would recommend ? — Certainly. 

 I say nothing about the place. I simply say have the 

 collections in the one jjlace. 



382. Have you any view as to what amount of amal- 

 gamation would be adequate for the purpose of botanical 



study ? There seem to be three courses : — One is that 

 the two herbaria should be completely incorporated, 

 sheet by sheet ; another course is that the herbaria 

 should be kept separate in adjacent buildings ; and 

 there is an intermediate course, that they should be 

 amalgamated to the extent that they should be all in one 

 %)uilding — that the incorporation should not be sheet by 

 sheet, but that cabinets belonging to one herbarium 

 should be placed side by side with the corresponding 

 ■cabinets of the other herbarium. Do you understand 

 what I mean ? — I think so ; either that the whole should 

 be am.algamated together, or that the two herbaria 

 should be in separate buildings, or that they should be 

 amalgamated in one building by the cabinets being 

 placed side by side. 



383. That, of course, does not preclude a certain 

 ■weeding out, if necessary, but it is a distinction between 

 amalgamation by sheets and amalgamation by cabinets. 

 Is that, in your opinion, a feasible thing ? — ^Are you 

 asking from the side of the convenience or inconvenience 

 to visitors to the herbarium ? 



384. I am asking this : If there were no other objec- 

 tions would it be, in your opinion, in the interest of 

 botanical science preferable to have the complete in- 



•corporation ? — I should say certainly not. For instance, 

 take a genus like Piper, where we have about 300 species. 

 Already at Kew we have to go through a number of 

 countries to find out a particular specimen we want, and 

 if you have half a dozen specimens from the same locality, 

 representing no difference in detail, you simply have a 

 surplus that is only a hindrance to those who visit the 

 Museum, without being any help to them. What one 

 wants is an absolutely complete collection of all known 

 plants, and all varieties of those plants, and in addi- 

 tion to that, such specimens as have been described in 

 hooks, we will say the Flora of India, or works of that 

 sort. When those specimens are marked as at Kew 

 "Flora of British India," such and such a page, you 

 know that those are the specimens that have been de- 

 described by the author of the work. With the very 

 "best botanists some mistakes will occur, so it is neces- 

 sary to refer to specimens which have been described in 

 hooks ; and specimens which have been described in 

 floras — that is, the type specimens — should, I think, be 

 retained at the one National Herbarium, and they should 

 he marked, of course, as types, so that people might 

 know them as such. 



385. I had better put the question in this way. Tou 

 are of opinion that it wo aid be desirable that the two 

 herbaria should be brought together ? — Certainly, in 

 the first place. 



386. Might I ask you what manner of bringing them 

 together you would recommend as being the one which 

 is most desirable in the interests of botanical science 

 ■on the one hand, and which could be carried out practi- 

 cally with the least disturbance? — That is to say, if I 

 had the work to do, how would I do it? 



387. Tes ? — I should say that it would be preferable 

 to take from the specimens in the British Museum all 

 those which are lacking at Kew, and to place those in 

 the Kew Herbarium so as to make them easily referable 

 and easily consulted. 



388. Are you aware that the sheets in the two herbaria 

 are of different sizes? — I think that is not so muc> r. 



matter of very great importance. In the herbaria of 

 the Pharmaceutical Society', for instance, half the 

 sheets which come in are of a certain size, and our 

 sheets are larger, and I just make four little insertions, 

 fasten them in, and gum them behind. There is no ^ 

 need to touch the specimens at all. It is simply a 

 matter of fitting them to the sheets. It must of course 

 occur when sheets come from other museums, that some- 

 thing of the kind must be done in order to make them fit 

 the particular sheets used at Kew, because, unfortu- 

 nately, although there is a normal size, which I have 

 mentioned in my article " Herbaria," in the " Encyclo- 

 predi-a Britannica " — I think it is 17 by 11 — it is not used 

 in all herbaria. Specimens occur which are gummed on, 

 and thj she-jts mttst be utilised by being gummed on to 

 larger sheets, as the case may be. That would be my 

 view. Then, with regard to the duplicate specimens, 

 those which already' exist at Kew and the British 

 Museum might be utilised for making a reference col- 

 leotion to be placed in the Eoj^al College of Science, or 

 wherever they would be found most useful. 



389. Or left at the British Museum ?— If thought 

 proper. There should be a reference collection some- 

 where where it is most likely to be used by ordinary 

 students. I do not mean students from other countries, 

 like professors from museums abroad, and so forth, but 

 ordinary students who wish to obtain some idea of the 

 natural orders of plants, and the species and types con- 

 tained in them. 



390. Tou mean a herbarium left rather for educa- 

 tional purposes than research purposes ? — Exactly so. 



391. Then I gather that you are in favour of what I 

 spoke of a little while ago, as a complete incorporation ? 

 — Tes, excluding duplicates. 



392. -Sheet by sheet ?— Tes. 



393. Tou are aware, of course, that the sheets at Kew 

 are smaller than the British Museum ? — I was not aware 

 that they were smaller. 



394. So that the process you advocate would have to 

 be inverted ? — In that case I suppose it would be neces- 

 sary to use separate cabinets, unless, of course, the speci- 

 mens allowed of being cut down. 



395. Supposing that the plan which you have just now 

 put before us should not prove practicable, would it 

 answer the purpose of your research if what I spoke of as 

 the_ third method was adopted, simply putting the 

 ca-binets containing the specimens which it was°deter- 

 mined to retain in this collection side by side, so that 

 there would be no need of any question of the size of 

 sheets ? — Each cabinet would contain a certain collec- 

 tion, certain Natural Orders, or divisions of Natural 

 Orders, placed side by side with the cabinet containing 

 the same Natural Order or division from Kew ? — ^Tes. If 

 you want to find out what is in a certain genus, for in- 

 stance, if the species of the British Museum were placed 

 close by those of Kew, it seems to me there 'would be 

 very little difficulty in referring to them. lb would be 

 quite different from- having them in a place some miles 

 distant. 



396. Then really such a course would, to a very large 

 extent, meet your wishes in botanical research ?— It 

 vv-ould be a very great help if one could see the whole of 

 the specimens in a place close by. 



397. I understand from what you said just now that 

 supposing the collection for the purpose of' research now 

 existing at the British Museum were transferred to Kew 

 you would still leave, either at the Roval CoUet^e of 

 Science or at the British Museum, a complete reference 

 herbarium, not having in its items authentic or type 

 .specimens, but simply a reference h,erbarium to be 

 mainly used for educational purposes ?— Tes. For in- 

 •stance, recently one of our students wanted to see a 

 species of Psilotum, or some rare plant allied to it, and 

 went to the British Museum collection to see it. A good 

 many men going in for science degrees or as science 

 teachers in botany wish to get some idea of the natural 

 grouping of plants and the extent of the different natural 

 orders with their variations, and so forth, in an instruc- 

 tive and comparatively easy way. It is impossible for 

 them at such a large herbarium as Kew, to form an idea 

 of the different groups of plants : they cannot afford 

 the time to exam'ine such a number of species. But a 

 key collection or reference collection would be very 

 useful to those engaged in work of that kind. 



398. Would you have such a collection freely open to 

 the public in the same way that the collections at present 

 ozisting in the public galleries are open ? Or would tou 



.I//-. E. M. 

 Holmes, 



F.L.S. 



ov. 



1900. 



