2-982-609 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Newly Opened Botanical Room at the British Museum, [London], 1858. 'At the two ends of the room are placed trunks of tree-ferns, palms, and other remarkable monocotyledonous trees...Of palms, the date, cocoanut, and betel are among the most generally interesting...Among the other specimens...are a bamboo, grown at Chatsworth, which attained a height of forty feet in six weeks from its first appearance above the surface of the ground-thus growing at the average rate of nearly a foot per day; and a specimen of the reed of which the Indians of Guiana make use for blowing their poisoned arrows, which frequently reaches...to the length of sixteen or seventeen feet. Over the centre of the wall-cases on the northern side of the room is a fine frond of the talipot-palm of Ceylon...In the next case are numerous specimens...of the oil-palm of Africa, the source of the palm-oil now so extensively used as a substitute for tallow...In case 12 is exhibited a dried leaf of the noble water-lily named after our gracious Queen...One of the tables contains also a series of botanical specimens of Banksia and Dryandra...among the most remarkable and characteristic of New Holland [ie Australian] forms'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.