SPE re ee ee 
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1884.] A walk through the Nat. History Museum at Florence. 489 
Philip Barker Webb. This botanist had traveled extensively over 
a large portion of Europe and Asia Minor, accompanied by Ber- 
thollet, and together they published a volume on the Canary 
islands, where he had for several years resided. Having visited 
Florence, in 1848, he was so much impressed with the value of 
its botanical collection, and with the interest in the museum shown 
bythe Grand Duke, that he bequeathed his rare herbarium to 
the prince, and endowed the botanical section with an annual in- 
come to aid in its extension. His botanical library of 5000 vol- 
umes is fitly arranged in an adjoining room, and ranges from 
Theophrastus to Gray, through Bauhin and Miller and the bulky 
Herbals, and long lines of the Botanical Magazine and many 
other serials. I was glad to see that several recent volumes of 
the American NATURALIST, handsomely bound, had been added 
to the collection. 
The herbarium of Webb is said to have contained eighty thou- 
sand specimens, What tales they could tell of wanderings in 
the far-away wilds in which they grew, of weary travel amidst 
deserts, forests, swamps and on Alpine heights, by enthusiasts 
Prompted by the genius of science. None but the devotee to 
nical research or the mania for collecting, can know the joys 
of the discoverer of unknown plants. To find a species hitherto 
undescribed, or better still, the representative of a new genus, 
with the faint hope that some light of botany may recognize his 
i ton and immortalize him by giving his obscure name 
a. thrills him with a joy unknown to common mortals. 
ko : is fittingly commemorated in a marble bust placed in the 
ight of a window, in the hall devoted to the display of vege- 
table Products, and again on canvas in the gallery of his unique 
Tins e ancient Egyptian plants, Delphinium orientalis, Nymphaa carulea, 
the lotus and Carthamus tinctorius have been satisfactorily determined _ 
‘S and sepals which were found arranged in rows and attached to willow 
