Botanic Garden Newsletter, Fall 1999, page 8

identify plants in the field, and field editions containing only the illustrations and a small amount of text in the margins became popular. The Rare Book Room has two of these reduced-size, or "octavo," editions in the collections. One, a French translation, was hand-colored by a previous owner; the color is still surprisingly fresh.
An encyclopedic tome of botanical lore and medicine published a century later is particularly delightful, as it is in modern, if dated, English. John Gerard, author of The herball, or Generall historie of plantes, published in 1633, writes in a note to the reader,

Orchid from Gerard's
1633 Herball

from earlier work. Gerard's Herball contains elaborate descriptions of the medicinal uses of plants, which in the 1600s were fantastically diverse. Looking up the familiar garden Crocus, I found that "it is recommended against the stoppings of the liver and gall and against the yellow jaundise."
Among the more contemporary holdings of the Rare Book Room is a beautiful set of color floral lithographs by George Smith, dated 1828. Designed to illustrate the principles of Linnaean floral classification, the prints were published for a charitable ladies' society. Although Linnaeus's binomial system of naming organisms is still very much in use today, his method of classifying plants by floral structure was rejected with the advent of modern genetics and evolutionary theory. Aside from providing insight into the ideas of the time,

For the general differences, affections, &c. of Plants, I hold it not so fitting nor necessarie for me to insist upon them; neither doe I intend in any large discourse to set forth their many and great uses and vertues: give me leave onely to tell you, That God of His infinit goodnesse and bountie hath by the medium of Plants, bestowed almost all food, clothing, and medicine upon man.

Despite this unassuming declaration, Gerard proceeds, in several hundred pages, to describe in minute detail the known members of the plant kingdom with all their "many and great uses and vertues"-including a few with no apparent virtues at all. The monumental scope of the Gerard is made somewhat less impressive, however, by the fact that Gerard "borrowed" many of his illustrations

documents such as the Linnaean floral lithographs show how science becomes incorporated into ever-wider circles, eventually becoming a pastime for hobbyists. Curator Martin Antonetti exhorts us to think of collections like those of the Rare Book Room not as repositories of ancient ideas and dead languages, but as sources of real and vital knowledge. "There's nothing mysterious or ineffable or sacred about it...This is the raw stuff of research."
I often think of the Botanic Garden of Smith College as a kind of living museum, a museum not only of the natural history of evolution and taxonomic relationships among plants, but also of the relationships between plants and people, and the ways in which plants have been significant to human cultures. As a first-hand account of these histories, the collections of the Rare Book Room are a perfect counterpart to the living collections at the Botanic Garden.

My career at the Botanic Garden began in 1997, in the fall of my senior year. As part of a student internship, I worked with Curator Susan McGlew on keeping accession records and inventories of the plant collections. When Susan left the Botanic Garden in the spring of 1998 to work at the publishing firm of Sinauer Associates, I joined the ranks of the staff as Interim Curatorial Assistant, taking charge of the plant database and the Friends membership records. Over the past two years, I have learned a great deal about what goes on "behind the scenes" to ensure that an institution like the Botanic Garden remains a valuable resource for both public enjoyment and academic research. I have also become aware of how lucky we alums (and students) are to have such a resource in our midst. Not until I began working here did I realize that not every small liberal arts college has such outstanding botanical collections, or that plant material from our Conservatory supplies the raw materials for taxonomic and biotechnological research around the world.
These are days of great transition for the Botanic Garden, and it has been quite a job for us all keeping everything running smoothly here. Yet, the Botanic Garden remains a place of vision and purpose. I am continually amazed at the dedication and professionalism of the Botanic Garden staff. They not only kept the campus and Conservatory looking wonderful through a year made difficult by staff shortages and one of the worst droughts on record, but they increased the number of wild-collected species offered to fellow gardens in the annual seed list, put on extraordinarily successful Bulb and Mum Shows, and hosted an exceptional series of lectures and events. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with my colleagues here, and I will continue to keep in touch with the Botanic Garden as I pursue other
opportunities.

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My career at the Botanic Garden began in 1997, in the fall of my senior year. As part of a student internship, I worked with Curator Susan McGlew on keeping accession records and inventories of the plant collections. When Susan left the Botanic Garden in the spring of 1998 to work at the publishing firm of Sinauer Associates, I joined the ranks of the staff as Interim Curatorial Assistant, taking charge of the plant database and the Friends membership records. Over the past two years, I have learned a great deal about what goes on "behind the scenes" to ensure that an institution like the Botanic Garden remains a valuable resource for both public enjoyment and academic research. I have also become aware of how lucky we alums (and students) are to have such a resource in our midst. Not until I began working here did I realize that not every small liberal arts college has such outstanding botanical collections, or that plant material from our		Conservatory supplies the raw materials for taxonomic and biotechnological research around the world. These are days of great transition for the Botanic Garden, and it has been quite a job for us all keeping everything running smoothly here. Yet, the Botanic Garden remains a place of vision and purpose. I am continually amazed at the dedication and professionalism of the Botanic Garden staff. They not only kept the campus and Conservatory looking wonderful through a year made difficult by staff shortages and one of the worst droughts on record, but they increased the number of wild-collected species offered to fellow gardens in the annual seed list, put on extraordinarily successful Bulb and Mum Shows, and hosted an exceptional series of lectures and events. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with my colleagues here, and I will continue to keep in touch with the Botanic Garden as I pursue other opportunities.