48,000 Specimens Of Plants Gained By Gray Herbarium

Gathered from all parts of the world, more than 48,000 sheets of mounted plant specimens were added in the past year to the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University, making a total collection of 994,704, the greatest in America and the finest in the world in North and South America flora, Merritt L. Fernald, Director, and Fisher Professor of Natural History, said today in his annual report.

Gifts from many sources included rare plants from tropical Africa, China, Alaska, Cuba, Italy, Philippine Islands, Crete, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and various parts of Canada and continental United States. Field expeditions gathered specimens in Louisiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia and Dominica, and thousands of other specimens were acquired by purchase or exchange throughout the world.

Collins Gift Biggest

The most extensive gift was a collection of thousands of sheets of plant specimens gathered during many years by Professor J. Franklin Collins of Brown University.

Plant exchanges were made in the year with more than fifty institutions in the United States, and with institutions in twenty-three foreign countries. Thirty investigators from Europe and America came to the herbarium to study.

The herbarium building, in the Botanic Garden in Cambridge was completed in 1915, but the collection has grown so rapidly that the building is overcrowded and must soon be enlarged, Professor Fernald reported.