Multiple Discovery

Like many botanical discoveries the terrarium was independently discovered by two people. Ward gets the credit but an obscure Scottish botanist, A.A. Maconochie, invented the terrarium before Ward in 1825. However, Maconochie did not make his invention public until 1839, well after Ward's invention was widely known. Maconochie decided not to press his claim of prior invention. Maconochie is an example of the "publish or perish" concept in science; he failed to publish his terrarium experiments so he did not get credit for them.