Professor Robinson's Trip Abroad

In order to classify properly a number of obscure species of tropical American plants, Professor Robinson, the curator of the Gray Herbarium, while abroad this summer, spent considerable time examining the types which are preserved in the various European collections. There so called types are the original plants, which such early scientific explorers as Mocino, Lagasca, Alauran, and others, took home with them as specimens of the new world's flora. Since, in botany, classification rests upon a historical basis, any one who first describes a new plant has the right to give that plant a scientific name, which, thereafter, must be accepted by botanists as the only correct one. Further, if he preserves a specimen of his newly discovered plant, it becomes a type. In many cases the description given by the discoverers, especially the Spanish explorers of America are very inadequate. Consequently, when further exploration brings to light numerous species of the same genera as the types, it often becomes necessary to compare these with the types themselves in order to determine which are the new and which are the old species.

It is in work of this kind that Professor Robinson has been engaged. He stayed sometime at Geneva, where, in the de Candolle collection there is a very large number of types of Mexican and South American species discovered by the Spanish explorers. He also examined types in the Michaux collection at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, in the British Museum of Natural History in London, and at the Kew Gardens, also in the vicinity or London. At the Kew Gardens, there is the largest collection in the world of both dry and live plants.

As a result of his work, Professor Robinson has brought back for deposit in the Gray Hebarium many photographs and drawings of these plants, hitherto imperfectly understood upon this side of the Atlantic.