LIBRAEY CONTRIBUTIONS. 
THE STURTEVANT PRELENNEAN LIBRART. 
In 1892 Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant, of South Framingham, 
Mass., a gentleman who, through his studies of agricultural 
botany, had become greatly interested in the records of 
wild and cultivated plants preserved in the early Herbals, 
Natural Histories, and Medical Botanies, presented to the 
Garden a large collection of such works which he had been 
accumulating for a period of years, attaching no conditions 
to the gift, but suggesting that it would be well if the col- 
lection, together with other works of the same period, 
might occupy a vseparate alcove, the contents of which 
should ultimately be published in a catalogue, in order that 
students might know of the existence of these works at the 
Garden.* This suggestion was at once complied with, so 
far as the arrangement of the books is concerned, and a 
separate card catalogue of the Prelinnean library was pre- 
|)ared, but with Dr. Sturtevant' s consent its publication 
has been deferred until the present time for various reasons. 
Even a casual inspection of the PreHnnean shelves shows 
that no study of the cultivated plants of the present time 
can be at all complete unless the minute and painstaking 
records of the herbalists are consulted, for, with so mut- 
able a class of plants as our flowers, vegetables, farm crops 
and fruits, the tracing of their history under cultivation is 
no small part of their .study. What is asserted of culti- 
vated plants, among which it has been stated by one of 
their most distinguished American students that the artifi- 
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