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over £2,000-was for the first time to be met by a parliamentary grant, there was a keen demand for possible economies; but the Keeper maintained that its business could not be conducted with a smaller staff until all the ancient papers should be calendared and indexed "according to the plan of 1800," still requiring" some years to complete."

Two events only in the history of the State Paper Office remain to be chronicled. First its removal in 1833 to a new building in Duke Street-with the simultaneous shifting thither of the sentry on guard outside its doors. The clerks again received a gratuity of £10 each " for their assiduous exertion and privation of their accustomed vacation" during the three weeks occupied by the operations. The second and last event is the final absorption of the State Paper Office by the Public Record Office. This involved a strenuous fight, for the State Paper Office was anxious that its independent existence should continue. After much discussion an Order in Council was issued in March, 1852, requiring all documents belonging to Her Majesty to be placed under the charge of the Master of the Rolls, and in 1853 the State Paper Office, as an independent department, ceased to be.

R. A. ROBERTS

THE INDEX KEWENSIS AND NEW GARDEN

PLANTS

Index Kewensis Plantarum Phanerogarum. Supplementum Sextum. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1926.

No people in the world appear to take so much interest

in gardens as do the Scotch and the English. Not only is there a deep-rooted love of flowers in the race, but there is a very general feeling of pleasure in growing plants. The keen gardener delights in good plants and is ever on the look out for useful additions. The gratification experienced in growing a plant well, and in the gradual acquisition of new forms, is shared alike by the cottager and by the wealthy; and this, together with the love of beauty, is doubtless responsible for the bond of sympathy which exists between all true gardeners.

The problem of providing new garden plants is a very wide and important one, and may be roughly divided into two spheres, namely the introduction of new species from abroad, and the selection and production of new forms and hybrids by the nurseryman and plant-breeder. The story of both spheres is full of interest. The latter, which is the newer and more technical, has in many branches been raised to the status of a scientific industry. The former-to which this article is confined-is no less honourable; the enterprise of commercial firms and private persons in sending out expeditions, and the zeal and fortitude of the collectors, being alike admirable. Nor must the work of the botanist be forgotten. Without the maintenance of a complete system of classification the correct naming of garden plants would soon become practically impossible. At our great botanical institutions, though not a tenth of their work immediately relates to horticulture, botanists are always at work classifying, naming and describing new plants from all parts of the world.

In dealing therefore with the subject of new garden plants from abroad we may consider (1) the botanical aspect of the subject, (2) the work of collecting, and (3) some of the results as far as horticulture is concerned.

The appearance of a new supplement of the " Index Kewensis" is a forcible reminder that the world's stock of new plants is anything but exhausted, and in order to give some idea of the vastness of the supply, a reference to the scope and purpose of this monumental work may be made. The Kew Index, which was conceived by Charles Darwin, aims at affording a complete index to the names of genera and species of all flowering plants, together with a reference to their first place of publication and their country of origin. The compilation, which is carried out at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, necessitates the close searching of the botanical literature of all nations. Every quinquennium the results of the five years' compilation are published as a supplement. The sixth supplement, published in May, 1926, contains approximately 32,400 names.

The original Index included all names published up to 1885, starting from the "Species Plantarum" of Linnæus; it contained approximately 385,000 names. Since that date, six supplements, containing some 225,000 names have appeared. It should be noted, however, that the Index, since it includes synonyms, does not profess to provide an exact list of species. In the original Index and in supplements 1-3, synonyms were "reduced" to a name which was considered correct. These "reductions" expressed the views of the leading botanists of the day, but as the subject widened it was found impossible for the editor to attempt to take this responsibility, and hence the Kew Index from supplement 4 onwards is an index of names, and not an index of actual species. With our imperfect knowledge the publication of “bad "species is inevitable, and a certain number of synonyms must be deducted from the total. This, however, increases rather than detracts from the value of the Index as a work of reference, and without such an encyclopædia systematic research would soon be involved in a much greater chaos than that in which Darwin found it. To the owner of extensive plant collections also, the Index is invaluable, not only in supplying a list of known species and a reference to where fuller information can be obtained, but as indicating the country of origin of each and the geographical distribution of the genus as a whole.

The present Supplement includes plants from all over the world. Of the new plants recorded only a small proportion are of horticultural value, and of these only a limited number have

been introduced to cultivation. Tropical countries are well represented. From Malaya, the Philippines, Central America, and from the various countries in Africa, comes a steady stream of material and many new species are described annually by the botanical staffs from dried specimens in the large herbaria, especially those of Europe and America. Of single countries China probably heads the list, a fact largely due to direct horticultural exploration. Of new rhododendrons alone, China is responsible for 213 species.

The work carried out by the herbarium botanist is little understood and may be briefly explained. Herbaria consist of collections of dried plants, named, classified, and filed for purposes of reference and documentation. In large herbaria the flora of the world is represented as far as possible by specimens of every species from every country, and from every vegetation-type of area in each country. In this way the complete flora of the whole world is gradually built up, and the collection acts as an unpublished record. The systematic botanist in the herbarium develops through practice an almost uncanny eye for points of detail, even with dried specimens. Strange indeed as it may seem, our knowledge of the floras of the world is not so much obtained from living plants as from dried specimens. Some of the most celebrated specialists on certain floras have never visited the areas concerned and, since it was impossible to grow the plants at home, the success of their published works is a triumph for that branch of botany. Such a state of affairs however is certainly not ideal, and with greatly increased facilities for travel, exclusively herbarium work is practically a thing of the past.

In any classification the scheme must be complete, so that every plant may be fitted into its appropriate position. The wealth of material is enormous, but no botanist considers it waste of time to classify the apparently worthless, for it is well-known that some of the most valuable discoveries of science have been made when a path of investigation was being pursued from which no material benefit seemed likely to accrue. In such establishments as Kew and the British Museum, and the corresponding institutions abroad, all groups of plants (i.e., flowering plants, ferns, mosses, fungi, etc.) are dealt with, and it is incumbent upon the staff to refer every plant, however humble, to its proper species. Special attention, however, is always given to plants of

promise, whether in the realms of agriculture, forestry, horticulture, or economic botany.

Although one of the principal functions of a great herbarium is the naming of plants and the maintenance of well-arranged collections, this work is subservient to the more definitely constructive output, such as the preparation of hand-books, monographs and floras. The abundance of new material sent from new countries during the past twenty years has been such that practically all the old colonial floras (which when prepared were admittedly preliminary) are out of date, and new floras are urgently required. In national institutions the colonial side is ever prominent, though as explained above, the work embraces the flora of the world. This is inevitable not only for the sake of science, but for practical reasons; we cannot ignore, for instance, the plants of Brazil and Venezuela if we wish to prepare a flora of British Guiana.

With this brief reference to herbarium work, we may pass to the more horticultural side of national botanical institutions. All botanic gardens have an interest in horticulture, but at Kew and Edinburgh, by reason of the systematic research alluded to above, botany and horticulture are in specially close touch. The directors who administer these gardens, are invariably also eminent experts in systematic botany. The living collections are available for the indoor systematist, and the resources of the library and herbarium are available for the garden staff. The closer and more sympathetic this co-operation is the better, since there is great risk of specialization so engrossing the mind that other branches of the same great subject are forgotten.

At Kew and Edinburgh there are, in fact, unrivalled opportunities for pursuing research on the botanical side of horticulture, and the enthusiasm with which this work has been prosecuted is known to all. Kew has covered a wide field; Edinburgh has long specialized. The flora of China, of supreme importance horticulturally, is her special subject and she has a lasting memorial in Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour's work on Rhododendrons and Primulas (to mention two cases only), now ably carried on by his successor, Prof. W. Wright Smith. The magnitude of the tasks undertaken by Kew often prevents her from specializing extensively on purely horticultural groups.

With regard to new plants specially intended for the garden,

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