SUMMARY OF PREVIOUS ENQUIRIES. 



155 



p. 170, 

 Par. 3. 



par. 



Statement, Appendix, Xo. 3, in the Kew Gardens 

 Return." 



Beplt " to Professor Owen's Statement relative to the 

 Botanical Departments respectively under the 

 Trustees of the British ^luseuni and the Commis- 

 sioners of Works " (see Beturns to House of Com- 

 mons, 25th July 1872, entitled " Kew Gardens ")• 



P. 109, par. 4 Professor Owen divides the "aims and applications" 

 of the Royal Gardens of Kew, according to his view of 

 them, under seven heads. 



It is sufficient to state that some of these are recog- 

 nised by the Government, and specified in then- 

 instructions under which the Director carried out his 

 duties ; but that others, and those of a most comfire- 

 hensive nature, have no place there, and are not such 

 as pertain to Botanical Gardens elsewhere. Amongst 

 these are the agricultural operations specified by 



P. 169, par. s Professor Owen, "the application of manures, 

 demonstrations of the fittest species of grasses for 

 particular soils * * * methods of irrigation, 



. subterranean pipe, conveyed liquid manures, 



■ and so forth," all of which are being carried out with 



vigour and success by various agricultural societies 

 and private individuals throughout the country. 



To establish such operations at Kew would involve 

 an enormous expenditure, and occupy many acres of 

 ground now devoted to the legitimate purposes of a 

 Botanical garden. 



Illustrations of rock-works, garden sculpture, and 

 ornamental waters, also recommended by Professor 

 Owen, appear to be equally out of place. 

 2 Professor Owen is in error in stating that the 

 arrangement of plants in natural groups, with con- 

 spicuous labelling, &c., is at Kew "at present limited 

 to the herbaceous grounds ;" as he is also in implying 

 that there is no illustration of "geographical 

 distribution," which is in truth carried out to an 

 incomparably greater extent at Kew than in any other 

 garden known to me at home or abroad. Professor 

 Owen cannot have visited the houses devoted to ferns, 

 orchids, succulents, aroids, &c., nor the arboretum, 

 fruticetum, and pinetum, nor observed the arrange- 

 ment on the shelves of the two great buildings, the 

 palm stove and the temperate house. 



Par. 7. The fact that a first-rate herbarium and library must 



be maintained for the purposes of a botanical garden, 

 and in immediate proximity to it, has not only been 

 uniformly admitted and acted upon by successive 

 p 171 par 1 Governments, but is so universally recognised by 

 naturalists everywhere that I am surprised that 

 Professor Owen should dispute it. 



I am sure that were he acquainted with the nature 

 and amount of the duties devolving on this establish- 

 ment, he would abandon his opinion without 

 hesitation, 

 par. 1 In support of the contrary opinion he refers to that 

 early period in the history of Kew, when its new and 

 rare plants were named at the Banksian herbarium 

 in London. But the naming of a few new and rare 

 plants cultivated at the beginning of the century in a 

 private tjarden of nine acres, probably at no one time 

 containing more than 4.000 species, is a very different 

 matter from keeping accurately named public collec- 

 tions that occapy 300 acres, and are estimated to 

 contain 20,000 species ; and this in an establishment 

 that is annuallv called upon to name literally thou- 

 sands of plants from other botanic gardens and nur- 

 series in England and similar institutions abroad. A 

 greit deal of°the naming, and keeping correctly named, 

 the plants at Kew can be conducted only by skilled 

 botanists visiting the grounds daily. Large classes of 

 plants are now cultivated that must be named m the 

 houses where they grow and many more, the tropical 

 especially, could not be sent to adistance to be named, 

 without serious damage in transitu. 



To this must be added the necessity of naming and 

 ticketing with copious information the vegetable pro- 

 ducts of economic interest, in three museum buildings, 

 the illu.stration of which products by specimens, Pro- 

 fesor Owen admits to be a legitimate object of the 

 Gardens of Kew. 



Nor was the naming of the Kew plants carried out in 

 London ; as is supposed, there was ^a large herbarium 

 in constant use at the Royal Gardens at the very period 

 alluded to ; the breaking up of which, when it was pro- 

 posed to give up the Gardens, necessitated the formation 

 of another. 



P. 171 



No comparison whatever can be instituted between the p. i7i,i)ar. t 

 needs in these respects of the Royal Gardens at Kew 

 and the Zoological Society's Gardens in the Regent's 

 Park. 



The reflection that follow on the conduct of the lale Para. .5, a 

 and present Directors of Kew Gardens are not suited for 

 official discussion. 



Profesor Owen is in error in asserting that tlie mai;i p. 172, par. a 

 end or drift " of Dr. Hooker's e-vidence before the 

 Scientific Commissioners is to impress upon them the 

 necessity of the transfer of the collection of dead plants " 

 from the British Museum to Kew. 



My evidence is unequivocally opposed to such a 

 transfer. 



Herbaria are not costly establishments, but the least 

 exj)en6ive of all natural history collections ; and the 

 objects and applications of botany in its largest sense, 

 are now so numerous and so important, as to render a 

 division of the subject necessary ; whence the expediency 

 of maintaining a country and a metropolitan department;, 

 each with a herbarium, as the most essential, but least 

 expensive of its adjuncts, may readUy be demonstrated. 



So far from desiring that the British Museum herbar- 

 ium should come to Kew, I should propose to recruit 

 it from that at Kew, which could be done to its very 

 great advantage. 



Professor Owen's approval of the saying of " a great p ly^^ p^r. 3 

 wit and original thinker," that "the net result" of a 

 herbarium is the "attaching barbarous binomials to dried 

 foreign weeds," will not find an echo amongst those 

 conversant with the subject. Had it been otherwise, 

 successive Ministers woiild hardly have tolerated the 

 existence of the Kew herbarium, or of that at the British 

 Museum either. 



The disparaging remarks that follow on the views of P. 173, par. 5 

 liis duties held by the late Director, and on his perfor- 

 mance of them, are not best dealt with by the counter- 

 assertions pf his son ; they are best disposed of by 

 certain passages in the Treasury Minute that follows 

 Professor Owen's statements, and by tlie unanimous 

 verdict of the late Director's countrymen and foreigners 

 everywhere. 



The suggestion is offered that an ofiicial inquiry should x). 174^ par. 2 

 be made of leading gardeners to ascertain " the kind and 

 degree of information and aid which they derive or 

 have derived from the National Establishment." 



The answer to this has already been given, in the 

 addresses to the Premier by the Royal Horticultural 

 Society as a body, and separately by its Floral, Fruit, 

 and Scientific Committees ; and by the meeting of botan- 

 ists and horticulturists held in London ; and by the con- 

 current evidence of gardening periodicals throughout this 

 country. 



The statement that the Royal Gardens had not ful- p. 174, par. 3 

 filled their function of introducing new, rare, and beauti- 

 ful plants, is best met by a reference to the pages and 

 illustrations of the "Botanical Magazine;" a work that 

 has issued monthly (and without a month's intermission), 

 from Kew, ever since 1840, edited by the Director, and 

 which is devoted to new, rare, and. interesting plants, 

 the larger proportion of which have flowered at Kew. 



In the contrast drawn between the herbarium estab- p. 174, par. 

 lishments at the British Museum and at Kew, it is n. *c. 

 .stated that the staff of the former consists of three 

 officers, with aggregate salaries of £850, and " that their 

 time is exclusively given to the duties for which they are 

 paid " ; whereas the aggregate salaries of the three 

 herbarium officers at Kew is £750, and that one is 

 Professor of Botany in University College, and anotlier 

 a lecturer at a London Medical School. 



I am surprised that Professor Owen should be un- 

 aware that one of his own three officers ie botanist to 

 the Royal Agricultural Society, and another a lecturer 

 at a London Medical School, and editor of a valuable 

 botanical journal. 



Nor does Professor Owen in his comparison take into 

 consideration that the Kew herbarium is open from. 

 8.30 a.m. till 5 p.m. in winter, and 6 p.m. in summer, 

 whereas the British Mu.seum herbarium is open only from 

 10-4 in winter, and 10-5 in summer, as also that the 

 Kew officers have not only the keep of the largest and 

 most frequented herbarium in the world, but of a very 

 large library, and have the duty of naming all the planta 

 throughout the gardens and museums, together with 

 many other duties that do not fall upon the British 

 Museum aflicors. 



