SUMMARV OF PREVIOUS ENQUIRIES. 



153 



15th Januajy, 1869, and forwarded to the Othce of 

 Works. 



A Botanical Museum, including a herbarium for the 

 advance of the science, through the naming of existing 

 species and the determination of extinct species of plants, 

 iultils the aims for which the nation provides and 

 supports it in the degree of the completeness of its 

 collections. In the measure in winch a competing 

 niuiseum and herbarium, also maintained at the public 

 cost, approaches, through the interception of State col- 

 lections of botany, and by outbidding at Cotanical sales, 

 to the perfection and completeness affirmed to be a 

 necessity at Kew, it detracts from the utility and primal 

 aim of the Metropolitan National Museum. 



To give an example of such evil, nullifying complete- 

 ness by rivalry : the herbaria collected by Banks and 

 Solander, lin .the .circuninavigatory voyages of Cook, 

 and those collected in the late voyages of Flinders, were 

 deposited, with the sanction of the Admiralty, in the 

 Botanical Department of the British Museum. 



By and through these herbaria, with the aid of the 

 Banisian Library, subsequently bequeathed with his 

 remaining Natural History Collections by Sir Joseph 

 Banks to tJie British Museum, E^jbert Brown was enabled 

 ±0 produce his works on the Botany of Australasia, 

 raising the Science of Plants in a degree second only, if 

 inferior at all, to that effected by the immortal worke 

 of Linnseus. On every account, scientific, administrative 

 and economical, collections of dried botany subsequently 

 made by G-ovemment officers in Government expeditions, 

 especially those suijplementing the illustrations of 

 Australian and New Zealand vegetation, previously ar- 

 ranged for the service of Science in the British Museum, 

 ought to have been located there. But the portion of 

 the Botanical Collections made during the Antarctic Ex- 

 pedition of Sir James C. Ross which has found its way 

 to the British Museum is chiefly the Ciyptogamic, or 

 that including the mosses, fungi, and lichens. For the 

 liigher organised, or phanerogamic part, by far the larger 

 proportion of the collections, the botanist requiring a 

 comparison of them with the earlier described species 

 from New Zealand and Australia is now compelled to 

 go from the Botanical Department of the British Museum 

 to the Competing Department developed by Dr. Hooker 

 at Kew. Not only so, but since the Antarctic Expedition 

 of Sir James C. Ross, the Royal Gardens at Kew, 

 according to the pre-ent Director's evidence, " have been 

 the recipient of almost all the collections made by Gov- 

 ernment Expeditions." (Evidence before the Scientific 

 Commission. Reply to Q. 6658.) That is to say, not 

 merely the specimens of living plants, which would have 

 found at those gardens an appropriate location, but the 

 dried or otherwise preserved specimens of dead plants 

 (herbaria) have been diverted from the Metropolitan 

 Museum. The necessity thus imposed upon the British 

 and foreign botanist to quit the herbarium in London 

 for the herbarium at Kew, arises in no way from the 

 nature of the case, but has been created by the will, 

 and, dn my view, the misapplication of opportunities 

 and influence of the present Director of the Royal 

 Gardens at Kew. Thus, in place of that aoiity and co- 

 operation to a common end of nubile utility which ought 

 to exist between the establishment for dead plants at 

 the British Museum and that for live plants at Kew, 

 they have been dragged into antagonism. Dr. Hooker, 

 in his reply to Q. 6681 of the Scientific Commission, 

 speaks of them as "competing bodies." But the British 

 Museum has had no part in bringing about this unwise 

 and unthrifty and uncalled-for condition. The com- 

 petition carried on at the public cost, in which the 

 Keeper of the Botanical Department of the British 

 Museum is compelled, by his duty, to bid against rivals 

 for rare and essent^;ally needed herbaria, as far as his 

 proportion of the Annual Parliamentary Grant to the 

 Trustees will go, is solely due to the Director of the 

 Botanical Department under the Board of Works, acting, 

 as I submit, from a mistaken view of his duties and 

 responsibilities. 



The main_ end or drift of Dr. Hooker's evidence 

 before the Scientific Commissioners, now sitting at No. 8, 

 Old Palace Yard, is to impress upon them the necessity 

 of the transfer of the collections of dead plants (the 

 palsBontological part or the fossils excepted) in the 

 Botanical Department under the Trustees of the British 

 Museum to the Botanical Department under the Board 

 of Works. 



E\adence before the Scientific Oommi?eion, " Q. 6683. 

 Would you contemplate any separate function for the 

 two Museums, or that they should have common func- 



tions. — -1. With regaid to one very important branch of 

 botany, the pahwontological, I think it would be best 

 that it should remain m or near London, it being as 

 essential to geologists as to botanists. Q. 6684. Besides, 

 therefore, tlie transference of the collection of fossil 

 botany to South Kensington, is there any other change 

 which you woulil desire to make in the museum at Kew 1 

 — A. No ; 1 would still keep Kew as the great scientific 

 working herbarium, to whicli, as hitherto, all botanists 

 must come, and I think that the herbarium at the British 

 Museum should be named coinfiaratively and consistent- 

 ly with that of Kew. Q. 6685. You would contemplate, 

 therefore, that the two establishments ancillary should 

 be under one common head? — A. 1 think that the two 

 herbaria should be re-arranged under one Head, and be 

 brought under one system of management." In other 

 words, the abolition of the Botanical Department in the 

 British Museum is recommended, and its reduction, 

 there, to an appendage of tlie Department of Palaeont- 

 ology. Also that the Botanical Department to be trans- 

 ferred from London to Kew should be imder one Head, 

 that is to say, the Director of the Botanical Department 

 under the Commissioners of Works. 



It is contemplatjd, agreeably with my Report to the 

 Trustees in 1859 ("Return by the Honourable the House 

 of Commons, ordered (m the 16fh March, 1859"), tliat 

 the Botanical Department shall take its share in the 

 instruction of school teachers in the elements of natural 

 history, by a free course on the principles and economi- 

 cal applications of botany. 



This application of the national collections of dried or 

 dead plants is expressly opposed by Dr. Hooker in his 

 evidence before the Scientific Commissioners, recom- 

 mending their transfer to Kew. Q. 6665. " Has any- 

 thing yet been done in the way of illustrative conversar 

 tions or lectures to persons visiting, or to particular or 

 special classes, visiting the Museum? — A. Nothing" 

 (the " Museum " is that of the scientific or herbarial 

 establishment at Kew, the subject of the preceding 

 question. Q. 6698. "Do you think it would be possible 

 for the ofiicers of the Gardens to combine the functions 

 of giving public lectures together with their present 

 duties? — A. I think it would be possible for certain able 

 and active officers to do so, but I think that it would 

 be highly inexpedient to require it of them." The evils 

 here threatened, in my judgment, to science, to the 

 integrity of the British Museum of Natural History, 

 and to its extended uses in aid of national education, 

 compel me, unwillingly, to submit to the consideration 

 of the First Commissioner of Public Works, evidence ot 

 what may appear to him, as to others, of the influence 

 of the amount of W'Ork now done at Kew, in connection 

 with its Herbaria, upon the works originally contem- 

 plated to be done there in connection with the gardens 

 of living plants. 



The scientific work of which a herbarium is the in- 

 strument has been defined by a great wit and original 

 thinker as the "attaching barbarous binomials to dried 

 foreign weeds.'' This roughly expresses the net result 

 of the application of a museum of dried plants ; it is 

 the proper and authoritatively assigned labour of the 

 Keeper of the Botanical Department under the Trustees 

 of the British Museum. But an estimable naturalist, 

 Gilbert White, has given a better and fitter opinion on 

 the subject : " the objection to (herbarian) botany is, 

 that it exercises the memory without improving the 

 mind or advancing any real knowledge, and where the 

 science is carried no farther than a mere systematic 

 naming and classification, the charge is too true. But 

 the botanist who is desirous of Tciping off this aspersion, 

 should be by no means content with a list of names, 

 he should study plants philosophically; should investi- 

 gate the laws of vegetation ; should examine the powers 

 and virtues of efficaceous herbs ; should promote their 

 cultivation, and graft the gardener, the planter, and the 

 husbandman upon the physiologist." 



To raise the "weed" to the condition of a plant, use- 

 ful to man's estate, is the work of a Director of a national 

 collection of living plants in adequate gardens and build- 

 ings with all appliances for culture, and requisite ex- 

 periments, liberally provided by the Nation to that end. 

 Most of the plants now of greatest use to man were 

 originally weeds. 



Almost yearly are additions made to the list of these 

 inestimable developments and conversions. We look in 

 vain for any evidence of such as represented by n(vw 

 flowers or fruits, raised at Kew.* 



* At least since the directoiship of th ■ Aitons, in the tiire of rThoiiaq 

 Andrew] Knight. ' 



