Herbarium (Collection of Pressed Plants), Found in Books at Oriel College, Oxford, c.1700

Collection of pressed plants with MS captions, c.1700, remounted in a modern volume (entitled on the spine ‘Herbarium | c. 1700 | Oriel College’), and consisting of 90 specimens; together with loosely inserted MS and TS notes by R. T. Gunther, including list made up of annotated transcriptions of the captions.

The collection was deposited on loan in 1931, shortly after the Dyer Collection of natural history specimens. The two are approximately contemporary, but there seems to be no other suggestion that they are related; the identity of the collector is thus not known. The pressed plants were found by the Librarian of Oriel College in or about 1931 enclosed in two printed books, Tournefort’s Institutiones (n.d.) and Hermann’s Simplex ac pia deliberatio (1545). They were professionally mounted for the Museum at the Botanical Department of the British Museum (Natural History Museum).