Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 1 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2BeA2nl.

The North American Sylva is a beautiful scientifically and historically-significant work. Authored by François-André Michaux, it is the first American silva – a descriptive flora of forest trees. Published originally in French in 1810, the first English version appeared in 1817, and it was further enhanced with supplementary volumes by Thomas Nuttall in the 1840s.

As an important work in the history of North American botany, The North American Sylva is featured in the National Museum of American History’s Cultivating America’s Gardens exhibit, co-curated by Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Gardens, and the Archives of American Gardens. On display in the exhibit is an 1853 edition of the work, published by Robert P. Smith of Philadelphia. The Smithsonian Libraries has digitized this copy and made it freely available in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 1 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2AmCYOY.

The Smithsonian Libraries’ copy is just one of many editions and printings of this title, which has a rather long and complicated history.

François-André Michaux was the son of André Michaux, also a famed botanist and explorer. In 1785, as the Royal Botanist to Louis XVI, André received a royal commission to travel to America to collect unique plants and identify useful tree species. François-André, then fifteen years old, accompanied his father, and together, the father-son team explored eastern North America, establishing two nursery gardens in New Jersey and South Carolina, and collected specimens, shipping plants and seeds back to France.

Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 1 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2BcTfpH.

In 1789/90, François-André returned to France, and six years later, his father did the same. The duo then prepared André’s Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique (1801) on North American oaks. This work would later serve as the basis for The North American Sylva. François-André would return twice again to North America, in 1801-03 and again in 1806-08, where he continued to develop his passion for trees and forestry.

Eventually, François-André would channel this passion into the production of a magnificent work on the trees of eastern North America: Histoire des Arbres Forestiers de l’Amerique Septentrionale. While his father André would not live to see this publication, having died in 1802 during a scientific voyage bound for Australia, his influence on his son’s botanical career was profound.

Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 2 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2j4RbbW.

Originally published in Paris in 1810 and consisting of 3 French volumes, Histoire des Arbres Forestiers de l’Amerique Septentrionale was later translated into English by Michaux. Colleagues at the American Philosophical Society helped arrange the publication of the first translated edition, which was printed by C. d’Hautel in Paris in 1817 under the title The North American Sylva and sold by Thomas Dobson of Philadelphia. The translation was expected to be published in six half-volumes, but later printings included a seventh half volume, six additional plates, and a revised English text by Augustus L. Hillhouse.

The work was beautifully illustrated with 156 copper plate engravings executed from drawings by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (one of the most-celebrated flower painters in the whole history of botanical art), Pancrace Bessa, Adèle Riché, and Henri-Joseph and Antoine-Ferdinand Redouté. Each treated species is accompanied by an illustration printed in color and finished by hand depicting the tree’s branch, leaves, flowers, and fruit.

Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 2 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2BdK4Fk.

In 1841, the first truly American edition of The North American Sylva was printed in New Harmony, Indiana by expert printer William Amphlett using the original engraved copper plates, which had been secured by philanthropist William Maclure during a trip to Paris with the intention of producing an American edition of Michaux’s work. The 1841 New Harmony edition was a reprint of an 1819 Paris edition which was the first to include Hillhouse’s revised English translation.

The New Harmony edition was also the first whose title page mentioned three supplemental volumes by Thomas Nuttall describing trees from the “Trans-Mississippi” region, the Rocky Mountains, and the western United States. Nuttall was an English naturalist who arrived in North America in 1808 and participated in a series of collecting trips throughout the United States under the auspices of some of America’s most pre-eminent botanists. This, together with the publication of his Genera of North American Plants in 1818, secured his reputation as America’s leading botanist.

Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 3 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2k7s1FW.

Nuttall began work on a revised version of The North American Sylva in 1839. Over a seven-year period, he produced his three-volume supplement printed in Philadelphia, with volume one, parts one and two published by Judah Dobson in 1842 and 1843, volume two published by T. Ward in 1846, and volume three published by Smith and Wistar in 1849.

The volumes included 120 additional plates prepared and executed under Nuttall’s supervision by E.D. Long, G. Worley, G. West, J.T. French, and J.B. Butler based on drawings by several artists, including William Gambel. The original drawings are in the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum (Cambridge) at the Botany Libraries of Harvard University.

Michaux, François-André. The North American Sylva. v. 3 (1853). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://s.si.edu/2zXQFzt.

Following Maclure’s death, the original copper plates for The North American Sylva were acquired by Samuel George Morton of Philadelphia, after which another American edition was produced, augmented with notes by horticulturalist John Jay Smith, who served as editor of The Horticulturist from 1855 to 1860 and The American Gardener’s Calendar in 1857. The Smithsonian’s 1853 copy in BHL includes Smith’s notes.

More editions and printings followed, amounting to a total of more than a dozen known editions in multiple printings and formats. The long-running publication of the work is a testament to its impact and importance. Indeed, The North American Sylva served as a standard reference for North American woody plants throughout 19th century.

Thanks to the Smithsonian Libraries and many other BHL partners and contributors, you can freely explore several different editions and printings of The North American Sylva in the Biodiversity Heritage Library:

• First French edition (1810) (Digitized by The New York Botanical Garden)
• 1819 Paris edition with English translation by Hillhouse (Digitized by University of Pittsburgh Library System)
• Nuttall’s supplements, 1842-49 (Digitized by The New York Botanical Garden)
• 1853 edition (Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries)

Hoya fetuana on cover of Hoya New, v.6: issue 4, 2017. Photo by Robert Dale Kloppenburg. http://s.si.edu/2BuX7ll.

Robert Dale Kloppenburg is definitely a dedicated botanist. As of January 2018 – when he celebrated his 97th birthday – he has named 234 plant species, mainly in the flowering genus Hoya, which has been his focus for close to forty years since his retirement.

Kloppenburg and the International Hoya Association, of which he is president, have made some generous contributions to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, with funding of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project. Currently available on BHL are:

• Fraterna : Official Bulletin for International Hoya Association (1991-2006): Contributed by International Hoya Association and digitized by Harvard University Botany Libraries and The New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
• Hoya New (2013-2017): Published and contributed by Robert Dale Kloppenburg.

Fraterna provides a wealth of information on Hoya species and hybrids, for botanists and horticulturalists, as well as the association’s news updates.

Hoya New presents new species descriptions with photos and identification keys.

Also currently available on BHL are Kloppenburg’s titles:

• Ganges Hoya (2008)
• Malaysian Hoya Species : A Monograph (2004)
• Samoan Hoya Species : Preliminary Presentation (2014)

Hoya andalensis on cover of Fraterna v.18: no. 1, 2005. Photo by Kim F. Yap. Contributed by International Hoya Association and digitized by The New York Botanical Garden. http://s.si.edu/2EoGlH0.

The International Hoya Association originated in 1988 as a USA west coast interest group which published a newsletter, first bi-monthly and then quarterly. By the end of their second year, international interest had allowed the group to expand to a non-profit with global membership. An affiliated group, ‘Svenska Hoya Sõllskapet’ based in Borlõnge, Sweden, also publishes a quarterly magazine about hoyas.

What are these plants? The association’s website describes the diverse genus:

“The genus Hoya is found in South East Asia through Australia. They are adaptable plants found everywhere from true rain forests through the slopes of the Himalayas, from semi-arid niches in Australia to damp forests. They range from vines, the most common form, to shrub-like growth. Most are epiphytic [growing on other plants]. Hoyas are in the family commonly known as milkweeds.”

Parts of Hoya bebsguevarre described in Hoya New, v.1: no.4, 2013. http://s.si.edu/2EotCQx.

“What interests me most about hoyas is the vast diversity, the genetic differences and their possible evolutionary significance,” Kloppenburg shared in an interview in Fraterna. “I am of the opinion that we have collected and identified less than 1% of the wild hoya species.”

As an opening message for Hoya New, Kloppenburg explains how the work of horticultural professionals and hobbyists can contribute to the conservation of biodiversity:

“When a species is collected from the wild, I feel it is wise to identify it, propagate it, and name it. In this way it will eventually get into the commercial channels, be distributed to all those interested in the genus and thus be preserved. If in the future the species is lost through natural causes or forest destruction it will still be here on earth in your collection.”

Kloppenburg began studying the genus Hoya in the Philippines in 1981. He had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, shortly after WWII and worked as a plant breeder research agronomist. Since his retirement in 1986, he has continued to study hoyas, traveling extensively in the South Pacific. His data has been donated to UC Berkeley. In 2016, he reached out to Smithsonian Libraries to offer publications, and agreed to contribute the material to Biodiversity Heritage Library. His assistant, Karen Case, assisted with the permissions process.

“It has been a most exciting journey to be hosted with such a prestigious organization as the Biodiversity Heritage Library, for which I will be eternally grateful,” Kloppenburg says. “I hope my work will help others to become interested in hoyas, and that they will carry on the discovery of new species in the future.”

Meanwhile, he’s still studying plants in the genera Hoya, Dischidia and Eriostemma. “I no longer travel, so I depend on others, mainly in the Philippines, to send me material,” he says.

Many thanks to the International Hoya Association and to Robert ‘Dale’ Kloppenburg for their commitment to sharing biodiversity research, and to Karen Case for helping to facilitate the process.

Sources:

• International Hoya Association website: http://www.international-hoya.org/aboutus.asp
• Robert Dale Kloppenburg’s website: http://hoyardk.wixsite.com/kloppenburg

The New York Academy of Medicine Library has contributed nine digitized titles (11 volumes) on medical botany to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) as part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project. It is very exciting to share some of the Academy Library’s botanical resources with the wider public.

The Academy is home to one of the most significant historical libraries in medicine and public health in the world, safeguarding the heritage of medicine to inform the future of health. The Library’s collections contain many of the formative texts of medicine and allied fields from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, as well as more recent titles. It is equally renowned for its extensive journal collection comprising medical serials from around the world, and for significant holdings in manuscripts, archives and ephemera, all of which are of great historical interest.

The New York Academy of Medicine Library’s Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room.

While the Library’s collections include a large number of printed botanical books dating back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, for this project we were interested in identifying resources that could be sent to the Internet Archive for external digitization, which meant that we concentrated on our holdings from the second half of the 19th century forward through 1922.

After generating lists from our online catalog, we checked to see if any of these resources had already been digitized by the BHL, Internet Archive, or HathiTrust. For this process, we developed a set of simple guidelines:

• Resources not available via BHL, Internet Archive or HathiTrust remained on the list.
• Resources already available via the BHL were eliminated from the list.
• Resources already available via the Internet Archive were eliminated from the list because BHL harvests content from the Internet Archive, so there would be no need for us to digitize that content.
• Resources already available via HathiTrust could still potentially be digitized for access via the BHL based on whether our copy provides additional information for the public once digitized. For example, the Indian Medicinal Plants (Kīrtikara & Basu, 1918) has been partially digitized by HathiTrust, but the volume with the images was missing. As such, it became important for us to digitize so that it would be fully available.

We went through multiple lists and rounds of de-duplication to narrow down our potential submission. Once we finalized the list, Scott Devine, Head of Preservation, conducted a conservation assessment to determine which resources could be sent out for digitization and which were so fragile that they could only be digitized in house. We separated these into two lists. The first list was sent to the Internet Archive for digitization and is our contribution to BHL. The second list will be a project for our new digital lab, and we hope to make them available at a future date.

Indian medicinal plants (Kīrtikara & Basu, 1918) stood out as a resource to digitize and share widely. It documents the medicinal plants found in India. The authors describe a need to provide a text that reproduces illustrations of Indian medicinal plants from other works since there were few prior to this publication. Dr. W. Roxburgh’s text, reprinted in 1874, was used as a reference throughout.

Kīrtikara, Kānhobā Raṇachoḍadāsa and Baman Das Basu. Indian medicinal plants. 2nd Ed. (1918). Plate #256, showing Leea sambucina. Digitized by The New York Academy of Medicine. http://s.si.edu/2DnszmA.

Although Indian medicinal plants did not focus on the use of plants in the development of drugs, this theme can be seen throughout the resources submitted to the BHL. Each author grapples with the role of plants in the creation and production of drugs.

In A course in botany and pharmacognosy (1902), Henry Kraemer, Professor of Botany and Pharmacognosy, defines pharmacognosy as the “study of drugs of vegetable origins.” Kraemer devotes the first part of his text to plant morphology and the second part to pharmacognosy. In addition, he provides illustrations to aid in the study of both parts so that students can connect the descriptions throughout the text to the visual representations.

Kraemer, Henry. A course in botany and pharmacognosy. 1902. Plate #1, showing organized cell-contents. Digitized by The New York Academy of Medicine. http://s.si.edu/2FJqAaI.

Youngken’s Pharmaceutical botany, 2nd edition (1918) was expanded to take advantage of the growing area of botany, including a section on drug-yielding plants. The text focuses on the morphology and taxonomy of plants used in drug development.

Youngken, Heber W. (Heber Wilkinson). Pharmaceutical botany. 1918. Fig 57, showing leaf bases, species and compound leaves. Digitized by The New York Academy of Medicine. http://s.si.edu/2mMr7Ri.

In Pharmacal plants and their culture (1912), Schneider argues that the majority of imported plants used in medicine could already be available in the United States. He focuses on California and outlines what can be cultivated and grown in the state. Schneider provides a list of uses and common names.

Gattinger’s and Allison’s report (1894) is an observational inventory of Tennessee’s plants and their descriptions based on a similar project conducted by North Carolina. Published by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, the report emphasizes the importance of documenting and understanding the native plants of Tennessee and how they can help increase usage and revenue.

Overall, readers of this collection can begin to understand the role of plants in the creation, development and economic viability of drugs. Many of the resources provide some form of inventory, index or list that documents the plants and associated drugs.

All titles submitted by the Academy Library to BHL:

• Baillon’s Programme du cours d’histoire naturelle médicale professé à la Faculté de médecine de Paris. 3ème partie, Etude spéciale des plantes employées en médecine (1878)
• Gattinger & Allison’s The medicinal plants of Tennessee : exhibiting their commercial value : with an analytical key, descriptions in aid of their recognition, and notes relating to their distribution, time and mode of collection, and preparation for the drug market (1894)
• Kīrtikara & Basu’s Indian medicinal plants / (Vol. 2nd ed. (1918) (1918)
• Kraemer’s A course in botany and pharmacognosy (1902)
• Meyer’s Arzneipflanzenkultur und Kräuterhandel : rationelle Züchtung, Behandlung und Verwertung der in Deutschland zu ziehenden Arznei- und Gewürzpflanzen ; eine Anleitung für Apotheker, Landwirte und Gärtner (1911)
• Moquin-Tandon’s Éléments de botanique médicale : contenant la description des végétaux utiles à la médecine et des espèces nuisibles à l’homme, vénéneuses ou parasites, précédée de considérations sur l’organisation et la classification des végétaux / (2. éd.) (1866)
• Schneider & California. State Board of Forestry’s Pharmacal plants and their culture (1912)
• Velásquez & Maldonado’s Contribución al estudio de la materia médica peruana (1920)
• Youngken’s Pharmaceutical botany / (2d ed., and enl., enl.with 195 illustrations) (1918)

Denisse, Etienne. Flore d’Amérique. 1843-46. Digitized by the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden. http://s.si.edu/2Ac5T4m.

In the 1840s, Europe was enraptured by the beauty of America’s tropical flora. With the production of the lavishly-illustrated Flore d’Amérique (1843-46), Etienne Denisse brought the exotic flowers, fruits, trees, vines, and nuts growing in the Caribbean Islands to captivated readers across the Atlantic.

As a lithographer for the French royal court, Etienne Denisse spent his early career at the botanical garden of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, but employment by the government took Denisse’s work to the New World. He spent many years in the French West Indies, illustrating and collecting plants from the region and sending specimens back to France [4] [2].

Denisse, Etienne. Denisse, Etienne. Flore d’Amérique. 1843-46. Digitized by the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden. http://s.si.edu/2iXrY2J.

Denisse’s work in America culminated in the production of the magnificent Flore d’Amérique, comprised of a total of 201 plates. This title is very rare, and copies are often incomplete. However, thanks to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden, anyone in the world can freely access Denisse’s masterpiece through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Flore d’Amérique’s stunning hand-colored lithographic plates were based on drawings “from nature” by Denisse. The work was issued in fascicles of six plates between 1843-1846 [2]. Imprints on the individual plates credit both the Parisian firm Gihaut Frères (plates 1-49,64-72) and Denisse (plates 50-63, 73-200) as publishers.

Denisse, Etienne. Denisse, Etienne. Flore d’Amérique. 1843-46. Digitized by the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden. http://s.si.edu/2hxKkUk.

Originally founded by Antoine François Gihaut as a firm of printsellers, Gihaut Frères expanded into publishing after Gihaut’s sons, Jean François and Michel Ange, took charge of the operation in 1822. In 1829, the firm received a brevet to serve as lithographic printers, but after 1839, this work was contracted out to other lithographic printing houses [1]. A variety of lithographic printers are credited via imprints throughout the plates within Flore d’Amérique, including d’Aubert & C.ie, Laujol, Kaeppelin & C.ie, Vayron, and Becquet.

In 2007, The New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library opened an exhibition celebrating the Caribbean’s history, culture, and biodiversity. Entitled Paradise in Print, the exhibition showcased the rich flora of the region through the display of printed folio editions, rare books, and original watercolors from the Library’s collection [3].

Denisse, Etienne. Denisse, Etienne. Flore d’Amérique. 1843-46. Digitized by the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden. http://s.si.edu/2ipbuMS.

Fittingly, Denisse’s Flore d’Amérique was among the treasures displayed as part of the exhibition. Through the printed page, Denisse and his fellow European explorers introduced the wonders of the New World to a broader audience across the Atlantic. Today, these illustrated publications are both works of art and valuable historical records that help provide insight into the ways in which European contact with America impacted the region’s biodiversity and culture.

View all of the illustrations from Flore d’Amérique in the BHL Flickr.

References

As part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project, an interesting title was added to BHL from Yale University’s Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library and the online Medical Heritage Library: An essay on the antiquity of Hindoo medicine, including an introductory lecture to the course of materia medica and therapeutics, delivered at King’s College, by physician-botanist John Forbes Royle.

Title page of An essay on the antiquity of Hindoo medicine, including an introductory lecture to the course of materia medica and therapeutics, delivered at King’s College, by Royle, J. Forbes (John Forbes), 1799-1858. London, Allen, 1837. Digitized by Yale University via the Medical Heritage Library. http://s.si.edu/2mtstTx.

This work from 1837 documents the materia medica (pharmacology) of India, and explores the historical exchange of medicinal knowledge between cultural groups of India, Arabia, Persia, Greece and China. Including details in botany, ecology, minerology and astronomy, it’s an intriguing interdisciplinary resource that can also be read for insights on its Western author and this period in time.

John Forbes Royle (1798-1858) traded his plan to join the British army for an unexpected interest in natural history. He was born at Kanpur, India, and would return to India after attending Edinburgh High School and the East India Company’s military academy at Addiscombe. Inspired by the mentorship of physician Anthony Todd Thomson, Royle chose to pursue medicine as a means to further his study of botany. He became an assistant surgeon with the East India Company, and in the following years worked at several locations across northern India, where he studied medicines from bazaars, employed collectors to amass a collection of economic plants, and became superintendent of the garden at Saharanpur. He earned the titles of MD in 1833 and Professor of Materia Medica at King’s College, London, in 1836.

An excerpt from Essay on the antiquity of Hindoo medicine demonstrates Royle’s interconnected thinking on medicine:

“There are, however, two branches of this extensive science [botany], respecting which I am desirous of making a few observations; one is the connexion between the Structure and Natural affinities of plants, and their Physical and Medical properties; and the other is the Geographical distribution, especially as connected with Climate. Both are important subjects, whether we consider them in a scientific or a practical point of view. The one teaches us the laws which influence the distribution of plants; points out the countries and climates which different families affect; and gives us principles for their cultivation, either as medicines, or as objects of agriculture: the other is no less valuable in affording us innumerable indications in every part of the world, for discovering the properties of new and unknown plants, whether as fitting them for food, for medicine, or for any of the arts of life[.]” [Royle, p. 3]

Cinchona, a South American genus. Its bark contains medicinal compounds including quinine, used to treat malaria. Royle recommended that Cinchona be grown in India. Image from BHL book: Icones plantarum medico-oeconomico-technologicarum cum earum fructus ususque descriptione. Wien:herausgegeben von Ignatz Albrecht und verlegt bey Phil. Jos. Schalbaecher, [1800]-1822. Digitized by Missouri Botanical Garden. http://s.si.edu/2iiHgMh.

Cushing/Whitney Medical Library of Yale University

The copy of Royle’s text in BHL belonged to Edward Salisbury, a Yale graduate and professor who encouraged scholarship on West and South Asia. Salisbury donated his “Oriental Library,” a collection of hundreds of rare and early printed books and manuscripts, to the college in 1870. Salisbury’s Oriental Library is foundational to what is now the third-largest collection of Islamic manuscripts in the United States. Last year, Yale celebrated Salisbury’s 175th anniversary as the first professor of Arabic and Sanskrit languages and literature in the Americas.

Essay on the antiquity of Hindoo medicine is now held at the Medical Historical Library of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. The library was named for Yale graduates Harvey Cushing, known as the father of neurosurgery, and John Hay Whitney, Herald Tribune editor and patron of the arts. In 1935, Cushing and two other physicians, John F. Fulton and Arnold C. Klebs, donated their personal collections of medical texts to the medical library, beginning its Medical Historical Library. Its collections include materials ranging from the 16th to 20th century, with works from Robert Boyle, Galen, William Harvey, Hippocrates, and Andreas Vesalius. Additionally, the Historical Library also holds prints, a collection of weights and measures, and presents rotating exhibits.

The Cushing/Whitney Library is also home to the Cushing Center, a room in the stacks transformed to display the medical specimens of Cushing’s Brain Tumor Registry. Cushing meticulously documented over 2,200 case studies as he pioneered the field of neurosurgery, and his registry includes specimens preserved from human surgeries and autopsies as well as notes, journal excerpts, photos and negatives.

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library Historical Library. Frank Poole, 2004.

Medical Heritage Library

The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is an online collection of materials that are free and openly accessible through the Internet Archive. Royle’s Essay on antiquity of Hindoo medicine came to BHL via the MHL.

Much like BHL, the MHL is a collaborative effort by medical libraries to promote access to resources (such as rare books, pamphlets, journals and films) that are useful across a spectrum of disciplines. The collection includes over 200,000 titles with fascinating variety – skimming the landing page, one can find herbals, medical dictionaries and papers, as well as video clips of 1960s tobacco commercials and Helen Keller’s autobiography.

The Medical Heritage Library was launched in 2010 by founders The Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services; The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University; The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University; U.S. National Library of Medicine; and Wellcome Library in London, UK. (For more information about its content contributors, funding and support, please see MHL’s ‘About’ page.)

An essay on the antiquity of Hindoo Medicine is a welcome addition to BHL’s collection of works by John Forbes Royle, which include:

• Illustrations of the botany and other branches of the natural history of the Himalayan Mountains: and of the flora of Cashmere. London: Wm. H. Allen, 1839. (Digitized by Missouri Botanical Garden)
• On the culture and commerce of cotton in India and elsewhere; with an account of the experiments made by the Hon. East India Company up to the present time. London: Smith, Elder, 1851. (Digitized by the University of British Columbia Library)
• The fibrous plants of India, fitted for cordage, clothing, and paper. With an account of the cultivation and preparation of flax, hemp, and their substitutes. London, Smith, Elder, and Co.; 1855. (Digitized by Cornell University Library)
• A manual of materia medica and therapeutics including the preparations of the pharmacopoeias of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, with other approved medicines. London: John Churchill, MDCCCLVI [1856]. (Digitized by King’s College London, Foyle Special Collections Library)

Thanks to Melissa Grafe, Ph.D, Head of the Medical Historical Library and John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History, who shared how this volume came to the Medical Historical Library.

Sources

• About (n.d.) Retrieved from http://archive.org/details/medicalheritagelibrary&tab;=about.
• About (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.medicalheritage.org/about/.
• About (n.d) Retrieved from https://salisbury175.yale.edu/about.
• Harvey Cushing and the Cushing Center (n.d.) Retrieved from http://library.medicine.yale.edu/cushingcenter/history.
• History of the Library (n.d.) Retrieved from http://library.medicine.yale.edu/about/history.
• Royle, John Forbes (1837). London, Allen. Retrieved from https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/199214.
• Woodward, B. B. “Royle, John Forbes (1798–1858).” Rev. Mark Harrison. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. David Cannadine. May 2010. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24239.

Join us for Seeds in the Stacks, a Facebook Live tour at the USDA National Agricultural Library! We’ll go behind-the-scenes to explore selections from the Library’s collection of over 200,000 seed and nursery catalogs.

The USDA National Agricultural Library is the newest BHL Member. Since joining the consortium as an Affiliate in 2014, NAL has contributed over 2 million pages to the BHL collection, including a significant portion of its Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection. To date, NAL has contributed over 33,000 catalogs from this collection to BHL. The catalogs can be viewed in BHL as part of the Seed & Nursery Catalogs collection.