212 
KEW GARDENS. 
the plants in the cabinets do not need to be carried far when 
they have to be consulted. The most important part of the 
collection is the set of Indian and Colonial plants. Here are 
deposited the types from which the descriptions in the Indian 
and Colonial floras were made, and the whole collection is so 
arranged that, of almost any of the 46,000 plants that grow 
on British soil, a specimen duly named and authenticated can 
be referred to in a few minutes. Besides these the Herbarium 
contains a large collection of plants from other parts of the 
world. 
At the death of Sir William Hooker it was estimated to 
contain one million specimens, counting as one all individuals 
of the same plant from the same locality. At present about 
twenty thousand specimens are added every year. When 
dried collections are examined, the rule is that in recompense 
for the trouble of naming them the Herbarium is allowed to 
keep whatever is required, and it is to a large extent in this 
way that its growth goes on. At present, for instance, 
Dr. Aitcliison, the naturalist attached to the Afghan Boundary 
Commission, is engaged in working out the identification of 
the eight hundred species he has collected. During the last 
ten years the missionaries in Madagascar have sent home 
5,000 numbered specimens, and of these the determinations 
have been sent out to them, and the new species of which there 
was enough material, 700 or 800 in number, have been 
described and named. 
For any little-known country like Madagascar the plants 
that grow wild there are one of the best tests of its climate, 
and furnish a guide to the useful plants that may be cultivated 
with a fair chance of success. The foundation of the Kew 
Herbarium was the private collection which Sir William 
Hooker brought with him from Glasgow in 1840, and to this 
was added the herbarium of Mr. Bentham, and a set of the 
specimens collected in the Antarctic and Indian travels of 
Sir J. D. Hooker. Of late years the principal special 
additions have been the European herbaria of Gay and John 
Stuart Mill, the orchids of Lindley, the British herbaria of 
Watson and Borrer, the mosses of Bruch, Schimper, and 
Hunt, the lichens of Leighton, the algae of Mrs. Griffiths, and 
the fungi of Berkeley and Cooke. Besides the Indian and 
Colonial floras, Mr. Bentham and Sir J. D. Hooker have 
elaborated a “ Genera Plantarum,” in which the ten thousand 
genera of flowering plants are fully described and classified 
under their natural orders. This was the work of twenty 
years, and it is used in the Garden, Herbarium, and Museums 
as the standard of nomenclature and classification. 
