BOTANY. 



153 



teresting public Herbarium of British plants, and its value is con- 

 stantly increasing by additions from botanists who make the British 

 Flora their special study. 



The extensive Herbarium formed by Sir Hans Sloane became the 

 property of the nation in 1 753, along with his other collections. The 

 plants gathered by himself in Jamaica form the nucleus of this 

 Herbarium, and added to them are the collections of Petiver, Buddie, 

 Plukenet, Kaempfer, Kamel, Merrett, Boerhaave, Vailiant, Banister, 

 and others. According to the practice of the time these plants are 

 preserved in large folio volumes, of which there are altogether 310. 

 This collection had been placed in the Library of the British Museum, 

 and remained there until the establishment of the Department of 

 Botany, when, it was transferred to the care of Mr. Brown. The 

 plants are well preserved, and are catalogued in a copy of Ray's 

 "Historia Plantarum," so that they can be easily consulted. 



The collections formed by Hermann in Ceylon, from which Linnaeus 

 prepared his " Flora Zeylanica," are preserved in five volumes, four 

 containing plants, and the fifth consisting of drawings. 



The Department also contains the singularly interesting and 

 valuable collection of plants gathered in 1663 by John Bay in his 

 travels in Europe, a catalogue of which was published in his account 

 of his Journey in 1673. 



In these various Herbaria, the Museum possesses an unsurpassed 

 series of historical collections from the middle of the seventeenth 

 century to the present time. 



Besides the collection of dried plants forming the Herbarium, 

 there are two allied collections arranged in the same gallery in 

 parallel series. The one is the collection of fruits and seeds occupy- 

 ing the table cabinets in the centre of the gallery, and the other the 

 collection of woods placed in the smaller cabinets in the centre of 

 each bay. The position of the cabinets has permitted the arrange- 

 ment of the specimens belonging to these two collections in close 

 proximity to the Natural Orders in the Great Herbarium, to which 

 they belong. The student can thus easily command the specimens 

 in the three collections in the prosecution of his investigations. 

 Nor is the facility of reference confined to the mounted and finally 

 arranged specimens, for the method in which the unmounted collec- 

 tions are arranged and temporarily stored in small rooms behind the 

 great Herbarium, provides for their ready consultation, even before 

 they are incorporated in the Herbarium itself. 



The student receives assistance in his investigations from the 

 Library of the Department, already extensive, and rapidly increasing ; 

 and from a large collection of plates and drawings of plants 

 systematically arranged in the same order as the plants in the 

 Herbarium. 



The collection of original drawings comprises specimens of the 

 work of the principal botanical artists such as Ehret, J. Miller, 

 Nodder, Aubriet, Sidney Parkinson, Sowerby, Fitch, and especialLv 

 Francis and Ferdinand Bauer. 



