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of which 70 were printed books, the others being original drawings or paintings. The books were assembled from the library's own collection and from the collections of five other British libraries.

It would have been interesting, indeed, to see this exhibit, especially the original works. As for the printed books, however, I cannot feel overly disappointed about having had to miss this particular aspect of the Botanical Congress, for 80 per cent of these books are in the Missouri Botanical Garden library, only two of them in incomplete copies. Among those missing from our collection are exceptional items, to be sure, but at least half of them are either of quite recent vintage, 20th-century books, still available, or are more curious than important or beautiful.

A moment's reflection should prompt one to think about this ratio of 80 per cent. Is it unusual; if so, is it significant; and, if so, again, how did it come about?

The answer to the first question is 'yes'. In fact, there are quite certainly no more than five other places in the western hemisphere where any 56 of the 70 books on exhibit are to be found in a single collection, or even in a single city; all of these are within the area of the thirteen original states of the Union. The answer to the second question is also 'yes'--the fact in question is significant. If these books were inconsequential and thus rare because they were not worth saving, or if they were odd pieces produced in very limited editions of a dozen or so, the significance would be small. But actually, many of them are among the gems of botanical illustration. To name just a few, here are Curtis' Flora Londinensis, of 1777-98 with folio-sized engravings of flowering plants native to London; the same author's Botanical Magazine, begun in 1791 and still published in continuation--in it there are over 10,000