Curator of Gray Herbarium Describes New Additions to Collection, Discusses Summer Work in His Annual Report

Besides discussing the work of the Gray Herbarium and its rating with other herbaria, Professor Merritt L. Fernald '97, Curator, described the gifts which the Herbarium had received during the last year in his annual report.

The Gray Herbarium is rated as one of the world's seven preeminent herbaria by the International Botanical Congress, Dr. Fernald states. The only comparable American herbarium is in the New York Botanical Garden, and the other five outstanding collections are in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain.

The Harvard collection is considered the most authoritative in the world in plants of the United States and South America, and is very strong in Arctic and Mexican flora. The Herbarium was founded in 1864 when Asa Gray, pioneer American botanist, gave his private collection of more than 200,000 specimens to Harvard.

Busiest in Summer

"Throughout the year the facilities of the Herbarium are freely at the disposal of visiting specialists," Dr. Fernald reports, "and during the summer vacation the building is even busier than during the regular college term, systematic botanists from other institutions in all sections of North America and often in Europe or Asia spending their vacations here, following out their various problems."

Among the most important acquisitions last year was a shipment of about 3,000 plants from the Upper Great Lake Region of the United States, collected by Arthur S. Fease, professor of Latin at Harvard, assisted by Eugene C. Ogden, of Cambridge, graduate student at Harvard.

A shipment of particular interest of 260 plants of the Belgian Congo, was collected by the Second Harvard African Medical Expedition and presented to the Gray Herbarium by Joseph C. Bequaert, assistant professor of Entomology at the Harvard Medical School.

10,000 Virginian Specimens

From the vicinity of Cape Henry, Va., 3,300 plants were sent to the Herbarium by Ludlow Griscom, research curator in Zoology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. Bayard Long, of the Philadelphia Academy of Science, and John M. Fogg of the University of Pennsylvania. Under Professor Fernald's direction the Harvard botanical staff have been collecting extensively in the Virginia coastal region for the past three summers and have obtained about 10,000 specimens.

More than 200 rare plants of western New England and New York were sent to the Herbarium by Dr. Edwin H. Eames, an amateur botanist of Bridgeport, Conn.

More than 15,000 duplicate specimens were exchanged during the past year by the Gray Herbarium with active herbaris in the United States and Canada and with institutions in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Esthonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Roumania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

The plants collected on field trips are pressed and dried between large blotters, being sent to the Herbarium in this condition. When the specimens are received at the Herbarium, the staff glues the specimens on cards which are then filed. Plants may thus be preserved idenfinitely. If a student wishes to study a particular flower he takes it from the dried water. The flower then unfolds and then may be examined.