339 KEW GARDEN MUSEUM. 
perfect candle, in a series of samples presented by that truly philan- 
thropic company; 8. the various and many indeed well-known pre- 
parations of Chocolate, Tea, Coffee, and Sugar, the latter derived from 
an American Maple and from Beet-root, as well as from the Cane; 9. 
Opium in its various stages, from the “ poppy-head,” to the pernicious 
ball prepared for commerce; 10. the progress of pencil-making of the 
wood of a Juniper, improperly called Cedar; 11. the fibre or raw 
material and cloth, made from the Chinese ** Grass-plant," in reality a 
Nettle; 12. cases filled with the various preparations of the Jest . 
Caoutchouc or India-rubber tree of Pará (Siphonia elastica), presented 
by Messrs. Macintosh ; 13. the beautiful substance called Chinese Rice- 
paper, and long supposed to be a preparation of rice, but here shown 
to be an exquisite pith of a new plant (Aralia papyrifera), only found 
in Formosa, for the knowledge and for living plants of which we are 
mainly indebted to Dr. Bowring. The discovery last mentioned is only 
one of many instances (as will by-and-by be shown) of the origin and 
history of commercial vegetable products, of which we should yet have 
remained in utter ignorance, but for the formation of this Garden and 
this Museum. Information of this kind cannot fail to be acknow- 
ledged and appreciated in a great mercantile country. 
We flatter ourselves, too, that the general arrangement of the col- 
lection will prove instructive; and the marked attention of many visitors 
and the notes that are taken in the room and the works of artists per- _ 
formed there, show that it is so. 
While the collection was comparatively in its infancy, we adopted 
what may be called a popular arrangement of the articles, bringing 
them together as much as we could under the head of 1. Fibres or 
textiles; 2. Gums and resins; 3. Dye-stuffs ; 4. Starches; 5. Oils; 6 
Woods; "|l. Tannins; 8. Drugs; 9. Food for man; 10. Basket-work, 
etc., ete.; but this was attended with manifest inconvenience. Even 
to a botanist this arrangement conveyed no idea of the kinds of plants 
yielding such and such substances, or possessing such and such pro- 
perties; and it had this further difficulty, that to make each series 
complete several objects had to be repeated under two or more dif- 
ferent heads, many drugs being used as food, while some dye-stuffs 
are valuable as woods, eic. It appeared more advantageous to arrange 
the collection according to some botanical method; and none is 50 
convenient as that employed by Professor De Candolle, in his System 
