chiefly to support curatorial work and collecting, but also feature significant holdings of Māori-language material, and an impressive collection of rare books, including 16th-century herbals and florilegia, and many rare volumes on conchology. In addition, there exists an extensive collection of ephemera, built for the most part on donations from private collectors starting in the 19th century. Natural sciences The Museum's natural sciences collections are principally a research and reference assemblage that provides information on the distribution and morphology of plant, animal and mineral species in New Zealand and the regional Pacific. The Museum stores and exhibits 1.5 million natural history specimens from the fields of botany, entomology, geology, land vertebrates and marine biology. Botany The botanical collections of the Auckland Museum Herbarium (code "AK") were first established in 1870, and are the means by which the department carries out its function of collection and preservation of botanical materials, education—through public enquiries, individual and group visits, outreach programmes, and the display of material—and research and publication on various aspects of New Zealand flora. The focus of the herbarium collection is on wild plants (native and naturalised) in all plant groups principally from northern New Zealand and its offshore islands. Auckland Museum's is one of only three significantly sized herbaria in New Zealand; the others are at Landcare Research Auckland and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, in Wellington. The herbarium contains a number of collections from significant botanists including Thomas Cheeseman (curator, 18741923), and Captain James Cook's botanists, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. The Herbarium holds over 333,000 botanical specimens—including 200,000 angiosperms, 5,000 gymnosperms, 30,000 pteridophytes, 21,500 mosses, 12,300 liverworts, 22,000 algae, 27,200 lichens, and 1,000 timber samples. The Museum also holds a substantial collection of kauri gum, and a specialist collection of "fern books" (bound collections of ferns made by amateurs and professionals) along with a small "wet" collection—specimens preserved in liquid—of flowers, fruit and algae. Entomology The Entomology collection contains about 250,000 catalogued specimens and, while focused on the northern areas of New Zealand, includes important collections ranging from Three Kings Islands to the sub-Antarctic Islands. It is part of a national and international network and aims to contain a comprehensive reference collection of all insect types as well as other terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates (worms, spiders, millipedes and centipedes, some isopods and amphipods) from the New Zealand region. This includes both native and introduced species.