See the _Voyage à Montbard_, published by A. Aulard (Paris, 1890); A. Aulard, _Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention_, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1906); J. Claretie, _Camille Desmoulins ... étude sur les Dantonistes_ (Paris, 1875); Dr Robinet, _Le Procès des Dantonistes_ (Paris, 1879); "Hérault de Séchelles, sa première mission en Alsace" in the review _La Révolution Française_, tome 22; E. Daudet, _Le Roman d'un conventionnel. Hérault de Séchelles et les dames de Bellegarde_ (1904). His _Oeuvres littéraires_ were edited (Paris, 1907) by E. Dard. (R. A.*)
HERB (Lat. _herba_, grass, food for cattle, generally taken to represent the Old Lat. _forbea_, Gr. [Greek: phorbê], pasture, [Greek: pherbein], to feed, Sans. _bharb_, to eat), in botany, the name given to those plants whose stem or stalk dies entirely or down to the root each year, and does not become, as in shrubs or trees, woody or permanent, such plants are also called "herbaceous." The term "herb" is also used of those herbaceous plants, which possess certain properties, and are used for medicinal purposes, for flavouring or garnishing in cooking, and also for perfumes (see HORTICULTURE and PHARMACOLOGY).
HERBARIUM, or HORTUS SICCUS, a collection of plants so dried and preserved as to illustrate as far as possible their characters. Since the same plant, owing to peculiarities of climate, soil and situation, degree of exposure to light and other influences may vary greatly according to the locality in which it occurs, it is only by gathering together for comparison and study a large series of examples of each species that the flora of different regions can be satisfactorily represented. Even in the best equipped botanical garden it is impossible to have, at one and the same time, more than a very small percentage of the representatives of the flora of any given region or of any large group of plants. Hence a good herbarium forms an indispensable part of a botanical museum or institution. There are large herbaria at the British Museum and at the Royal Gardens, Kew, and smaller collections at the botanical institutions at the principal British universities. The original herbarium of Linnaeus is in the possession of the Linnaean Society of London. It was purchased from the widow of Linnaeus by Dr (afterwards Sir) J. E. Smith, one of the founders of the Linnaean Society, and after his death was purchased by the society. Herbaria are also associated with the more important botanic gardens and museums in other countries. The value of a herbarium is much enhanced by the possession of "types," that is, the original specimens on the study of which a species was founded. Thus the herbarium at the British Museum, which is especially rich in the earlier collections made in the 18th and early 19th centuries, contains the types of many species founded by the earlier workers in botany. It is also rich in the types of Australian plants in the collections of Sir Joseph Banks and Robert Brown, and contains in addition many valuable modern collections. The Kew herbarium, founded by Sir William Hooker and greatly increased by his son Sir Joseph Hooker, is also very rich in types, especially those of plants described in the _Flora of British India_ and various colonial floras. The collection of Dillenius is deposited at Oxford, and that of Professor W. H. Harvey at Trinity College, Dublin. The collections of Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, his son Adrien, and of Auguste de St Hilaire, are included in the large herbarium of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and in the same city is the extensive private collection of Dr Ernest Cosson. At Geneva are three large collections--Augustin Pyrame de Candolle's, containing the typical specimens of the _Prodromus_, a large series of monographs of the families of flowering plants, Benjamin Delessert's fine series at the Botanic Garden, and the Boissier Herbarium, which is rich in Mediterranean and Oriental plants. The university of Göttingen has had bequeathed to it the largest collection (exceeding 40,000 specimens) ever made by a single individual--that of Professor Grisebach. At the herbarium in Brussels are the specimens obtained by the traveller Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, the majority of which formed the groundwork of his _Flora Brasiliensis_. The Berlin herbarium is especially rich in more recent collections, and other national herbaria sufficiently extensive to subserve the requirements of the systematic botanist exist at St Petersburg, Vienna, Leiden, Stockholm, Upsala, Copenhagen and Florence. Of those in the United States of America, the chief, formed by Asa Gray, is the property of Harvard university; there is also a large one at the New York Botanical Garden.