SUMMARY OB' PREVIOUS ENQUIRIES. 



133 



T. THo:sisoN' 



E3l|., M.l)., 

 K.K.S-. 



1S71. 



\V. Cah 



KUTUKKS 

 Esq. 



, think. Ill whatever hands the appointment lies is a 

 ditferent question. 



* * « 



William Carruthers, Esq., examined. 



7714. I am the Keeper of the Botanical Department 

 at the British Museum. 



7715. '■ There is no connexion between the two collec- 

 tions" at the British Museum and at Kew. 



7716. " I do not see, upon the face of it, any reason for 

 any connexion being established between the two col- 

 lections. 



7717. I believe the nation does " derive advantage from 

 possessing these two collections independent of each 

 other. "But it is my impression that, inasmuch as we 

 have collections in diiferent parts of the country, in Edin- 

 burgh and in Dublin, kept up at tlie nationa'l expense, 

 it is necessary in such a large centre of population as 

 Lonxion, and much more as London is the attraction 

 for science throughout the whole countrj', we should 

 have national collections there, so that I would not put 

 the necessity for a collection existing in London, apart 

 from the necessity of a collection at Kew, on the require- 

 ments of the nation so much as on the requirements of 

 the enormous population of London, and of the scientific 

 visitors who are in the habit of visiting London." 



7718. As to the two collections having: different objects, 

 "I consider tihat Dr. Hooker, if you will allow me to refer 

 to his statement, has put it very clearly in a document 

 which I thought might be of use in connexion with this 

 natter, namely, a Return to the House of Commons, 

 ' Of all communications made by fhe Officers and 

 Architect of the British Museum to the Trustees respect- 

 ing the want of space," and so on, ordered by the House 

 of Commons, on the 11th of March lg59. At page 4, 

 Dr. Hooker says : " There are two circumstances which 

 I think the Trustees should bear in mind in dealing 

 with the question of the transference of the botanical 

 collections from the British Museum to Kew. 1. That 

 it is in one sense immaterial to us at Kew what becomes 

 of the British Museum herbarium ; for a first-rate her- 

 barium and library must be maintained at Kew, and are 

 indeed essential to Kew for naming the plants in the 

 Gardens and Museums of Economic Botany, and for 

 giving to botanists and gardeners the information daily 

 demanded of us." That is Dr. Hooker's own statement 

 of the first necessities for the herl^arium at Kew. In 

 the British Museum we do not contemplate any object 

 of_ that kind at all. It is a purely systematic and 

 scientific collection of plants for the use of systematic 

 botanists. In the second place. Dr. Hooker says : 

 " That their being indispensable to Kew, and in constant 

 use for the garden purposes, is no obstacle to their being 

 consulted to any extent by other botanists, nor does it 

 at all interfere with the facility of consultation. A her- 

 barium and library of such value and extent as that at 

 Kew must be, though originally maintained expressly 

 for the use of the garden, cannot with propriety be 

 closed to scientific botanists." I think that Dr. Hooker 

 clearly separates the principal object of the British 

 Museum herbarium, from that of the herbarium at 

 Kew." 



7719. A large number of persons make use of the 

 collections at the British Museum for the purposes of 

 study. "I made a note of the number of visitors. I may 

 say that previous to 1867 no record was kept of the 

 number of visitors. In the beginning of April of that 

 year, by the instruction of the Trustees, a regular record 

 was begun, and has been ever since kept. In the nine 

 months of 1867, the collections were visited by 811 per- 

 sons for scientific information ; in 1868, 840 visited it • 

 in 1869, 974 ; in 1870, 1,041 ; and during the first three 

 months of this year the number o'f visitors has risen to 

 406, which is a much larger proportion than we have 

 known on previous occasions, being at the rate of 1,600 

 a year. 



7720. The herbarium consists of two portions : first 

 the systematically arranged herbarium, which is bv far 

 the largest portion of the whole ; indeed, it contains, I 

 may say, the collection, and that is carefullv and syste- 

 matically arranged, and accessible with the greatest 

 facility ; and the remainder of the collection consists of 

 the plants that we are continually receiving either by 

 donation or by purchase, or plants that have beeii 

 similarly received in former times which_have not yet 

 been laid into the general herbarium. The great bulk, 

 I may say nineteen-twentieths of the collection, is care- 

 fully a,rranged, and any one plant can be obtained in a 

 few minutes. 



3499. 



S 



7721. The numbers that I have given just now are the 

 numbers of students — by students I mean not only men 

 niio come to investigate plants Kystemalically, but also 

 men who come for information which can only be ol)- 

 tained by application to the officers in the private studies 

 of the museum. 



7722. The herbarium is never opened Jo the public. 

 There are two rooms open to the public, but of the 

 numbers who visit those we have no record, as they are 

 perfectly free, and the public pass freely through them 

 without any special record being made of their numbers. 

 The herbarium is separated from the public rooms, and 

 before access can be obtained to the herbarium the bell 

 niusb be rung, and special application must be made. 

 I have only here a record of those who have come for 

 botanical information, not personal friends who have 

 called upon the officers." 



7723. I have the power of admittino; anyone who 

 wishes to examine the collection in the herbarium. 



7724. Without reference to any other superior officer. 



7725. " The full staflT, as it existed on the occasion of 

 the retirement of Mr. Bennett, is a keeper and two 

 assistants." 



7726. The assistants are under my direction. "At 

 present there is a vacancy, so that there is only one 

 assistant, but I hope that the vacancy will be speedily 

 fiUed up." 



7727. I have been consulted in the appointment of 

 my assistants.^ " I may say that I have only been a few 

 months an officer, and I have been consulted with regard 

 to the appointment of the assistant, and I know that my 

 own appointment was obtained directly through the 

 recommendation of Mr. Bennett, the then keeper, and 

 that the appointment of my colleague. Dr. Trimen, was 

 similarly obtained." 



7728. (Asked by Professor Huxley.) Do not you think 

 it might be a material advantage to the country in general, 

 as well as a saving of expenditure, if the herbaria at Kew 

 and the herbaria at the British Museum were put in 

 some sort of relation ; that either should stock the other 

 with what materials are superfluous in itself: for 

 example, as Kew must often obtain a very large number 

 of duplicate specimens of plants, would not it be desirable 

 that such specimens as you might wish to have should 

 come from Kew to the British Museum and vice versa ? 

 —Witness replied : I believe that it might be an ad- 

 vantage to us at the British Museum to liave such speci- 

 mens as were desiderata, but in the case of additions to 

 the British Museum it has been the practice carefully 

 followed by all the officers there never to acquire dupli- 

 cates, to obtain only sets of plants, so that the number 

 of duplicates that we have in the collection there is ex- 

 tremely few, and all of them are most unimportant. 



7729. Are there not in the British Museum collections 

 which have never been thoroughly worked out and named. 

 Mr. Brown's collection, for example? — .Mr. Brown's 

 collections are not in the British Museum. The series 

 of plants collected by Mr. Brown, and which were pre- 

 sented by him to Sir Joseph Banks, are all named and 

 accessible in the museum, but Mr. Brown's own her- 

 barium is not public property. 



7730. It is at present accommodated there, but it has 

 no connexion whatever with the museum. It is accom- 

 modated in a store room in the museum, but it is not 

 the property in any sense of the British Museum. 



7731. It is the property of Mr. Bennett. 



7732. It is simply accommodated there, in the same 

 way as any book of mine, in my room in the Museum, 

 may be accommodated there. 



7733. Are there no collections which have not yet 

 been worked out and examined in the British Museum ? 

 — I have explained that we have a considerable store 

 of plants, which, of course, are being continually worked 

 up, as there must be in all collections, but those plants 

 are all arranged geographically, and a large proportion 

 are also arranged with regard to the great natural orders 

 systematically, so that while they are in store they are 

 all accessible to students and are continually being 

 brought out for the benefit of workers, whenever they 

 think that they are of any use. 



7734. As a matter of fact, the collection at Kew is the 

 only great scientific herbarium at present, is it not ; I 

 mean that the extent of accommodation and workinfr is 

 far greater than anything that vou have at the British 

 Museum ?— I do not think so. I believe that the. her- 

 barium at Kew is more extensive and contains a larger 

 number of plants, but for thorough systematic work, for 



W. Oar. 



ItUTHKltS, 

 Est] . 



1871. 



