Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Page transcription

plates of ornamental plants introduced into cultivation in England; Sweet's
British flower garden, 1823-29, three volumes of very exquisitely drawn
and colored plates of plants from English gardens; Redouté's Les Lilia-
cées, 1800-16, eight volumes of folio plates, in printed stipple engraving,
of lilies, irises, amaryllis, etc., among the author's finest work;
van Rheede tot Draakestein's Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, 1678-1703, twelve
volumes of folio plates of the plants of Malabar; Sibthorp's Flora Graeca,
1806-40, ten volumes of folio plates reproduced from Ferdinand Bauer's
exquisite drawings of plants of Greece, etc., etc. These and their fellows
are the foundation stones of any great collection of botanical illustration as represented by flower prints.

But in another way the second question must be answered by 'yes'.
Had the National Library of Scotland chosen for its exhibit books to re-
present early herbals from 1481 to 1600, or the botanical works of Lin-
naeus, or early American works on botany, or floras of Germany, etc., the
ratio corresponding to the 80 per cent we are discussing would almost cer-
tainly not have fallen below 60 per cent and might well have reached 90
per cent, and the number of western hemisphere institutions likely to do
as well or better would in no case have exceeded a half dozen.

We come to the third question: How did it come about that this un-
usual and significant library is here in St. Louis? To Henry Shaw, of
course, credit is due for establishing and endowing the Garden, but he,
himself, and even his friend and counsellor, Dr. Engelmann, brought together
only a very small part of this collection. It is rather to Dr. William
Trelease, chosen by Henry Shaw to be the first director to follow himself,
that the credit should go. Almost at once (1890) he founded the Garden's