188 



Appendix I : 



Nature, 

 Vol. Ill 

 p. 401. 



JBeturn tu 

 House of 

 Commons. 

 No. 126, p. 9. 



Return to 

 House of 

 Commons. 

 No. 126, p. 7. 



Keturn ti 

 House of 

 Commons 

 No. 126, r 



Nature, 

 Vol. Ill 

 p. 401. 



Q. 77S9. 



removal of the National Botanical Collection from 

 London -w-ould so separate them from these collections 

 as seriously to injure their value to scientific investi- 

 gators. 



IV. The accommodation provided for the Botanical 

 Department in the New Museum of Natural History, 

 the plans of which have been accepted by the Trustees 

 of the British Museum, will be in every way superior 

 to any that exist in the world, and will be amply 

 sufficient to accommodate the proposed single National 

 Herbarium, as well as fully to display the structural 

 histological, and 23alasontological departments of the 

 science. All the requisites specified by Mr. Bentham 

 for the close study of plants, excepting the connection 

 with a garden, exist to a greater or less degree at the 

 British Museum, and some of them in a greater degree 

 than at Kew. That living plants are a requisite 

 adjunct to a herbarium, is in opposition to the testi- 

 mony of Mr. Brown and Dr. Falconer, to the efl^ect that 

 there is no necessary connection between a herbarium 

 and a garden ; and is opposed, moreover, to the testi- 

 inony of Mr. Bentham himself, as well as to his declara- 

 tion that his extensive systematic labours have all 

 been based on herbarium specimens, although they 

 ha,ve been carried on in close proximity to the finest 

 scientific garden in existence. 



In the event, then, of its being resolved to maintain 

 only one great national botanical collection, I would 

 submit that it should not be cut ofi" from the allied 

 biological collections, but be placed with them in the 

 same building in London. And that, for this end, the 

 collections presented by Mr. Bentham to the public, 

 and all that have been added to them by purchase or 

 presentation, be removed to London and" incorporated 

 with the National Herbarium ; and, further, that the 

 extensive botanical library formed at the national 

 expense at Kew be made, with the Banksian library, 

 the foundation of that National natural history libraiy 

 which will be required for the National Museum of 

 Natural History. 



It is necessary, in dealing with Mr. Bentham's 

 printed and publicly expressed views on this matter, 

 to bear in mind that he cannot be considered an un- 

 prejudiced witness. I have frequently referred 

 to his relations to the herbarium attached to 

 the Royal Gardens at Kew. He has thus 

 stated the reasons by which he was influenced 

 in presenting his herbarium and library to the 

 ' public in 1855: — "I thought that, at that time, there 

 , I was no herbarium and library in London sufiiciently 

 ■^ open for the use of botanists, and I presented them on 

 condition that they should form the nucleus of a national 

 herbarium and botanical library, to be kept at the 

 expense of Government, and open to the free use of 

 botanists." I can assert, in opposition to Mr. Bent- 

 h-am's belief — ^and a similar opiniom lias been, I under- 

 stand, recently expressed — that at that time the 

 National Herbarium and the National Library, as far 

 as it is an adjunct to the herbarium, were fully and 

 freely accessible to botanists, and were largely used 

 by botanists ; and this I am able to m.aintain from the 

 contemporary records of this Department, as well as 

 from the testimony of botanists who were then in the 

 habit of consulting the collections. Under the in- 

 fluence of this erroneous supposition, Mr. Bentham 

 imiade his awn herib'airiuim a national insititiuifcion, and a 

 rival to the Banksian Herbarium, and, under the in- 

 fluence of this same spirit of rivalry, he now believes 

 that there exists "a state of continual competition" 

 between the two herbaria. I am sure that Dr. Hooker, 

 and the authorities at Kew, will as strongly repudiate 

 this statement as I do now, if it is meant to imply a 

 competition in any way to the in j ury of science or the 

 public. It is only in keeping with the motives which 

 actuated him at the first that Mr. Bentham now 

 agitates for the incorporation of the Banksian Her- 

 barium with that of whicii his own forms the n'lcleus. 



ROYAL COMMISSION ON SCIENCE ; FOURTH 

 REPORT. 



The fourth report of the Royal Commission deals with 

 the British Museum as a whole. The Commissioners 

 in their Report, state: — 



* * * 



18. The evidence which we have received, however, 

 leaves no doubt upon our minds that the Banksian Library 

 ought to follow the botnnical collections to Sou+h Ken- 

 sington. On thispoint Mr. Garruthers says : — " It would 



Report, 



1850. 



8317. 



ileport 



1850 



Mr. 



Carruthers, 

 Appendix 

 XV., vol. i., 

 pp. 44-47 



Report, 



1850. 

 8303. 



be absolutely necessary [to have a subsidiary library, if 

 the botanical and other natural history collections are 

 removed to South Kensington] ; and I believe that unless 

 the value of the herbarium were to be greatly destroyed, 

 •the Banksian Library will be required to form a portion 

 of that subsidiary library, inasmuch as the Banksian Col- 

 lection was in continual use while the Banlvsian Herbarium 

 was being formed, and the volumes that form that lihrary 

 were annotated hj tlie workers in the herbarium, so that 

 if the books were left hehind and the plants separated 

 anywhere from the annotations on the books, the value of 

 the plants in their cross references to books would be 

 completely destroyed." 



* * * 



HI. The National Botanical Collections and 

 Gardens. 



26. Two institutions for the promotion of botanical 

 science are at present supported .by the State in or near 

 the metropolis. Of these, one is lodged in the British 

 Museum, under the charge of the Keeper of Botany; 

 the other at the Royal Gardens, Kew, under the Director 

 of the Gardens. 



27. From the date of its foundation in the year 1755. 

 the British Museum has contained a collection of dried 

 plants, the most valuable part of which, at that time, 

 was the Sloanian Herbarium ; but botany is said by the 

 celebrated botanist, the late Mr. Robert. Brown, to' have 

 been almost entirely neglected in the British Museum, 

 from the death of Dr. Solander, in 1782, until the year 

 18'27. In the latter .year, however, the hotanical collec- 

 tion was made into an independent department, of which 

 Mr. Brown was appointecl Keeper ; and the Banksian 

 Herbarium, devised to Mr. Brown during his life by Sir 

 Joseph Banks, was provided with accommodation in the 

 Museum. The collections were at .the same time opened 

 to general scientific visitors two days a week, and to, 

 foreign 'botanists visiting England five diays a week. 



28. The collection, as it noAV exists, consists of — 



1. r/ie Serharium, comprising, 

 (a.) The general herbarium, 

 (lb.) The British herbarium, 

 (c.) Various separate .herbaria of historical interest. 



2. The Structural series, comijrisinij, 



(a.) The fruit collection. 



.(b.) The collection of gums, resins, and other 

 natural products. 



(c.) The general collection, consisting of the larger 

 specimens chiefly exhibited to the puflbhc ; ,and 



(d.) The microscopical preparations, illustrating 

 the minute structure of recent and fossil plants. 



29. It may be remarked that the general collection of 

 fossil plants is under the charge of the Keeper of 

 Geology. 



30. Additions are made to the collection, by purchase, 

 at the discretion of the Keeper, subject to the approval 

 of the Trustees, and by donation. 



31. At present the full staff of the Botanical Departs Ev. Q. 7725; 

 ment is a Keeper and two Assistants, and its cost, durinc and Appsn' 

 the financial year 1870-71, was £1,767. ° '"" ''"'' 



52. With respect to the magnitude and scientific im- 

 portance of the Herbarium, the Keeper of Botany has ex- 

 pressed the following opinion: — "I believe that our 

 British Museum herbarium is unequalled in the world ; 

 and that is not only the opinion which I myself ha^^e 

 formed, for I am not very extensively acquainted with 

 herbaria abroad, but it is the universal testimony of 

 men who have become sufiiciently acquainted with" the 

 British Museum herbarium to form an opinion worth 

 considering." 



"I believe that the British Museum is visited by all 

 the foreign botanists that come to this country. * * * 

 I find amongst the foreign botanists, who have been in 

 the habit of visiting the Museum, the names of Cosson, 

 Baillon, Tmana., and Weiwitsch, who have been here 

 during the year 1871." 



33. The Royal Gardens at Kew were the private pro- 

 perty of the Crown until the year 1840. 



34. In the year 1838, a Committee was appointed by 

 the Treasury to Inquire into the Management of the 

 Royal Gardens, and that Cn.mmittee desired the late Dr. 

 Lindley, aided by Messrs. Paxton and Wilson, to report- 

 upon the condition of the gardens, and make recommenda- 

 tions for their future administration. In consequence, a 



dixXV., 

 vol. i., p. 46, 

 and Appen- 

 dix I. to this 

 Report. 



Q. 7734. 



Q. 7735, 



