174 



Appendix III. 



Appendix expenses incurred for this department for bookbinding 

 III. for Kew Gardens during the past five years has been 



£53 per annum. This sum has probably been almost 



entirely on account of binding books for the library. 



I am, 



Sir, 



Your obedient servant, 



(Signed) E. P. Plowmai^, 



" ' Assistant Controller. 



The Secretary, 



Botanical Work Committee. 



Xo. 4. 



Copy of a letter from Mr. George Simonds Boulger, 

 addressed to the Keeper of Botany, British Museum, 

 and communicated by him 13th December, 1900. 



34, Argyll Mansions, South Kensington, W. 



December 8th, 1900. 

 My dear Murray, 



When I first heard that anyone had seriously sug- 

 gested the abolition of the department of which you 

 are keeper, or the amalgamation of its collections with 

 those at Kew, my feelings can only be described as those 

 of dismay. On carefully thinking the matter over I am 

 forced to the conclusion that such a change would be 

 eminently undesirable, and I think so both as a stu- 

 dent and more especially as a teacher. I have made 

 frequent use of the Botanical Department for nearly 

 five-and-twenty years. When, under the guidance of 

 the late Mr. JSTewbould, I began the study oif pie- 

 Linnean botany, I found it of the greatest assistance 

 to my work to be able to have the unique works of the 

 Sloane and Banks libraries brought up from the reading 

 room to the old department at Bloomsbury, where the 

 herbaria of the earlier British botanists and their suc- 

 cessors, such as Banks and Edward Forster, could be 

 consulted side by side with their letters and descrip- 

 tions, published and unpublished." Since the trans- 

 ference of the collections to South Kensington I have 

 not only found the admirable library that has been got 

 together of the very greatest use in itself especially when 

 working at botanical biography ; but again and again 

 the presence of a British and a general herbarium in 

 the same apartments have saved an immensity of labour 

 in verifying minute points. As a very busy man, whose 

 time is largely occupied with other purely professional 

 work, I find Cromwell Road most convenient when only 

 part of a morning or an afternoon is available for bo- 

 tanical study, and when, with all existing or probable 

 railroad facilities, a journey to Kew would be out of 

 the question ; but, though this last is a matter acci- 

 dentally resultant from my living in the West End, the 

 convenience of speedy reference afforded by a compre- 

 Jiensive but exclusively botanical library must appeal 

 to everyone who has occasion to work both at Blooms^ 

 bury and at South Kensington. When studying one 

 particular group of plants it may certainly be necessary 

 to visit both the collection at Kew and that under 

 your care, as also those at Oxford, Cambridge, and else- 

 where, and a specialist may naturally often long for 

 the impossible concentration of all the objects of his 

 study within his reach at one time. This, however, 

 being impossible, I do not think that, with two Metro- 

 politan collections (which have, like most other British 

 institutions, grown up independently an9 more or less 

 fortuitously, so to sneak), and a very limited number 

 of important provincial col'iecuions, the English botanist 

 is at all badly off, as compared with a. tTioroueh-going 

 student in Germany or Trance. Such, a specialist will 

 generally, with the smal]e'=t group, find enough to 

 occupy him for a whole day both a£ Kensington and at 

 Kew, and will probably no more try to combine the 

 study of the growing plants at the latter pla;e with that 

 of the herbarium specimens than have the many eminent 

 fherbariiim-bctanists who have made Kew their head- 

 •quarters. 



So entirely distinct do I consider a botanical garden 

 to be from a herbarium, that, wTiilst it is undoubtedly 

 an advantage to have the garden as far from town 

 smoke as possible, and not shut in as are the gardens of 

 Paris, Brussels, Ghent, etc., if any change were desir- 

 able — which I very much doubt — it would be better, I 

 think, to bring the Kew Herbarium to some more oenlial 

 situation. 



Personally, I find that I often want tx> identify an 



exceptional British plant, a casual alien, or an exotic, 

 sent me, generally singly, as editor of "Nature Notes." 

 This may take me an hour at South Kensington, or little 

 more than the time consumed merely in getting to or 

 from Kew. 



But the circumstances of any one student are apt to 

 be so peculiar to himself that it is as a teacher that I 

 would emphasise my objection to the change mooted. 

 Here, again, I can speak with five-and-twenty years of 

 somewhat varied experience ; but, frankly, it is only 

 since the removal of the collections to Kensington that 

 I have seen them much used, or used them myself for 

 directly educational purposes. I have attended, with 

 the very greatest interest, numerous demonstrations in 

 which the late keeper of the department (Mr. Car- 

 ruthers) has made use of old and new books, drawings, 

 manuscripts, herbarium and museum specimens, includ- 

 ing fossils, to illustrate the history of special groups 

 in a way which would I_ believe have been impossible 

 elsewhere. Though I constantly, of course, take my 

 students to the small students' garden at Kew, to the 

 houses, herbaceous grounds, arboretum, and economic 

 museums there ; for the scientific study of pure'lrv struc- 

 tural botany, especially in the winter months, I know 

 of nothing to equal the series in the outer gallery and 

 the index museum in your department. Here I find, 

 without a railway journey or much perambulation of a 

 garden, subject-matter for many instructive demonstra- 

 tions of physiological as well as morphological topics. 

 I admit that the work and functions oi the library and 

 herbarium on the one hand, and of Qiese public exhi- 

 bition galleries on the other are very distinct ; but 1 

 should be very sorry to see either of them removed from 

 London. As to the former, I have already written 

 enough. As to the latter, it appears to me that one 

 of the main lessons of the NaturpJ History Museum 

 is the unity of life and its laws ; that natural history 

 does not mean zoology or even biology, and that there 

 is — ^with all its inexhaustible variety — an underlying 

 identity in plant and animal life and structure. This 

 might, of course, still be made manifest to the visitor to 

 the Natural History Museum, if the herbarium were 

 reinoved ; but I do not believe that in such a case the 

 collections illustrating the vegetable sub-kingdom of 

 Nature would or could be adequately maintained by 

 the members o'f a staff whose main jnterests lay in 

 zoological studies. You will remember the pregnant dic- 

 tum of the laite directoT, fiir William Plower. that no 

 museum is ever finished or should ever be treated as if 

 it were eo. 



When I heard that a Commission was sitting on this 

 question I should have volunteered evidence — mainly 

 as a Metropolitan teacher— but was prevented by tem- 

 porary illness, until I heard that the Commissioners 

 considered that they had already taken sufficient evi- 

 dence for their enquiry. As, however, I venture to 

 doubt whether many botanists have had tlie same onpor- 

 tunities as myself — while knowing something of "Kew — 

 of making use of your department as a member of the 

 general public in several different ways, I shall be glad 

 if you have the opportunity, if you wifl put these views 

 of mine, for what thev are worth, before the Com- 



missioners. 



Believe me, dear Murrav, 



Yours sincerely, 



(Signed) G. S, Boulger, F.L.S., 



Professor oif Botany, City of London College, Editor 

 of "Nature Notes," etc., etc. 



To George Murray, Esq., F.R.S., 



Keeper of the Botanical Department, 



Natural History Museum. 



'No. 5. 



LIST OF PAPERS PUBLISHED AS THE 

 RESULT OF WORK DONE IN THE 

 JODRELL LABORATORY. 



(Handed in by Sir William T. Thiselton-Dyee, 

 K.C.M.G., 22nd December, 1900.) 



1876. 



Tyndall, Prof. J., F.R.S. Further Researches on the 

 Deportment and Vital Persistence of Putrefactive and 

 Infective Organisms from the Physical point of View. 

 Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. 1G7 (1877), pp. 149-206. 



