156 



Appendix I. 



p. 75, par. 



The fact is, that the exigencies of this establishment 

 require that the herbarium should be open during that 

 long period, but the officers are not required to be in 

 attendance, and at their work, for more than seven hours 

 daily throughout the year. 



Those seven hours (and to their honour be it said, 

 often many more) are devoted exclusively to the duties 

 of their respective offices. 



That the officers both of the British Museum and Kevr 

 sliould be chosen to conduct the very brief professional 

 and other duties which they perform elsewhere (at their 

 own time), is both honourable to themselves, and in 

 many ways advantageous to the establishments with 

 which they are officially connected, always assuming that 

 these vocations do not interfere with their working hours 

 at Kew, and at the British Museum, or with tHeir powers 

 of work during those hours. 

 t.i 75, par. 2 xhe statement that there are at Kew "• a special curator 

 of the museum, etc., and an assistant at £315 per 

 annum," is an error. 



There is but one curator for the three museums, and 

 his salary is £120, rising to £150, without a house or 

 any other advantage ; he has no assistant, and never 

 had one. 



The last of Professor Owen's statements to which 

 I shall allude are the following (which I quote verbatim). 

 "Dr. Hooker has been enabled to publish or aid in the 

 publication of 130 vols, on botanical subjects * * * *." 



"To the extent or proportion in which the Directors 

 time ha-s been diverted from the immediate aims of the 

 Royal Gardens to this foundation of his scientific fame, 

 the proportion of his salary of £800 per annum must 

 also be placed to his credit of the superaddition of the 

 dead plants to the Botanical Department under the 

 Board of Works, competing with the Botanical Depart- 

 ment under the Trustees of the Bi-itish Museum." 



The first statement in this extract has no foundation 

 in fact ; it would ill befit me to notice the insinuation 

 contained in the last. 



(signed) Jos. I). Hooker, 



Director. 

 Royal Gardens, Kew, 6 August, 1872. 



REiiAEKS on Dr. Hookeb's "Reply" to the "State- 

 ment relative to the Botanical Departments respec- 

 tively under the Trustees of the British Museum 

 and the Commissioners of Works." (Appendix No. 

 ni., etc., of Papers relating to Kew Gardens.) 



One object of my "Statement" is gained by Dr. 

 Hooker's wiithdiawal of liis design to reduce the 

 Botanical Department under the Trustees of the British 

 Museum to an appendage of the Palseontology (Sub- 

 department of Fossils), and by his admission of the 

 expediency of a "Metropolitan Department of Botany." 



Further comment on the "Reply" would have been 

 unnecessary had not the recommendation of the mode of 

 supplying the herbarium of such department urged upon 

 the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction been 

 fcrmally sulbmitted in the Reply to the approval of 

 the Commissioners of the Board of Works, to wit, "to 

 recruit it from that of Kew." 



It is important to all concerned to know the meaning 

 of such recommendation. It signifies a continuance of 

 the practice, since Robert Brown's keepership of the 

 Botanical Department of the British Museum, of trans- 

 ferring to the Royal Gardens at Kew all collections of 

 dried plants made by Government expeditions and those 

 purchased with public money voted for the Royal Gar- 

 dens. At the beginning of the practice some portion of 

 the dried specimens were sent to the British Museum. 



Of the botanical collections of the " Antarctic Expedi- 

 tion" of Sir James Ross, for example, the British 

 Museum was " recruited " by the mosses, mushrooms, 

 and lichens. Some duplicate phanerogams were sent in 

 1847 ; a smaller number of ISTew Zealand duplicates in 

 1854, after which the supply ceased. None of the 

 plants described in the fifth and sixth volume of the 

 "Botany of the Antarctic Voyage" [by Dr. Hooker] 

 have been received into the National Herbarium in 

 London. 



I will not trespass by multiplying the instances in 

 which botanical science, in so far as its advancement 

 relates to the completeness of the herbarium at the 

 British Museum, has been injuriously affected by the 

 ■Dnlicy and practice of the competing one at Kew. 

 Neither is it necessary to notice the bare and unsup- 

 ported denials of the conclusions from premises and argu- 



Reply, 

 Q. 6683, 

 Eoyal Com; 

 mission on 

 Scientific 

 Instruction 

 &c. 



P. 437, 

 Minutes of 

 Evidence, 

 Reply, 

 Q. 6732. 

 P. 2, par. 



ments set forth in my " Statement." But, in reference 

 to those showing that a complete herbarium in London 

 would subserve the functions of a " first-rats herbarium " 

 at Kew, the Directors of the Royal Gardens opposes 

 two reasons which call for notice. 



The first is, the " admission and action of successive 

 Governments ; " in the second, the Director states Reply, 

 that since the publication of the " Hortus Kewensis " ^- ^' P**"- ^ 

 tlie gardens of Kew have increased so as " to coaDtain 

 20.000 species," and that he is "annually called upon to /&. par. 7. 

 name literally thousands of plants from other botanic 

 gardens and nurseries in England and abroad." /!-. par. 7, 

 From this statement a non-botanical administrator might 

 conclude that the 20,000 species living and growing in 

 the Royal Gardens had been new or nondescript species 

 when received there. If this be so, it ought to have 

 been stated ; if not so, the percentage of the species re- 

 ceived into the gardens requiring a continuance of the 

 herbarian comparisons for determination and naming 

 ought to have been stated at least approximately. 



The same remark applies to the alleged "thousands" 

 of plants annually sent to Kew to be named. 



What is the proportion of such which a competent 

 botanist would recognise? What the number which 

 needed preliminary reference to a "herbarium?" 



In a question so grave as the very existence of a 

 Metropolitan museum of botany, statements and argu- 

 ments bearing thereon ought to be definite and intel- 

 ligible. 



If unknown species of living plants would receive 

 "serious damage in their transit from Kew to London " 

 in order to be named, what must be the amount suffered P -.par, i- 

 by "the literally thousands of plants from other botanic 

 gardens " sent to Kew to be named ? Under present ih- 

 railway conditions, provincial botanic gardens and nur- 

 series must send their unnamed plants to the 

 herbarium at Kew through London. They would be a.^ 

 accurately named if brought to the herbarium at the 

 British Sluseum. 



The Commissioners of Works, in the correspondence 

 and reports forwarded by the Trustees of the British 

 Museum in 1869, and by the " notes " of the then keeper 

 of their Botanical Department, will find means of testing 

 the statement as to "the universal recognition by natu- 

 ralists everywhere " of the necessity of maintaining Reply, p i, 

 a "first-class herbarium in immediate proximity to theP^-^. 

 gardens at Kew." 



The eminent botanist, John J. Bennett, F.R.S., 

 Y.P.L.S., and his accomplished successor in the keeper- 

 ship of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, 

 have ample and regrettable grounds for knowing that a 

 " first-rate herbarium " at Kew means a " second-rate " 

 one in London, so far as the present Director of the 

 Royal Gardens may have the power or opportunity of 

 raising the one and depressing the other. 



They are not the only botanists and naturalists who 

 know the drift of Dr. Hooker's reply to a leading ques- 

 tion of the Royal Commissioner, No. 6684. A. "I would 

 stUi keep Kew as the great scientific working herbarium, 

 to which, as hitherto, all botanists must come ; and I 

 think that the herbarium at the British Museum should 

 be named comparatively and eonsistentlv with that at 

 Kew." "That the two herbaria should be arranged 

 under one Head, and be brought under one system of 

 management." 



The covert design of superseding that eminent botan- iijuutes 

 ist, Mr. Carruthers, in his present headship, it does not of evidence 

 befit me to notice. J°y- Com- 



oC, p. 4o6. 



That the necessity of a museum of dead plants at Kew, 

 to which " all botanists must come," has " been uniform- 

 ly admitted and acted upon by successive Govern- 

 ments," is an argument which admits of a conclusion ggpjy p j^ 

 other than that which it is meant to suggest. No doubt par. 5 

 a Minister of Public Works receiving such statements 

 as that 20,000 species has to be determined and named, 

 and that " literally thousands of plants from other botanic 

 gardens at home and abroad" were equally without 

 names and specific determinations until supplied there- 

 with through a herbarium at Kew, might accept without 

 further inquiry and act on such averments and resulting 

 recommendations of the Director of the Royal Gardens, 

 to the end of developing the required herbarium there 

 at any cost or detriment to the older national herbarium 



in the metropolis. 



* ♦ » 



The advancement of the science of botany by the 

 officers of that department in the British Museuni, and 



