58 
EAST WING. 
Eay's 
Collection. 
Collection of 
Fruits, Seeds, 
and Woods. 
Library. 
Original 
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 Eay's 'Historia 
Plantarum/ so that they can be easily consulted. 
The collections formed by Hermann in Ceylon, from which 
Linnaeus prepared his 'Elora Zeylonica,' with annotations by 
both Hermann and Linnaeus, 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 Eay in 
his travels in Europe, a catalogue of which was published in 
his account of the journey in 1673. 
In these various Herbaria the Museum possesses an unri- 
valled 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 
occupying 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 arrangement 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 collections are arranged and 
temporarily stored in small rooms behind the great Herbarium 
provides for their ready consultation, even though they may not 
yet be incorporated in the Herbarium itself. 
The student receives assistance in his investigations from the 
extensive Library of the Department, and from a large collection 
of jjlates 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, J. R. & G. Eorstcr, 
