132 



Uih ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



to perform her part in the development 

 of the profession as regards this higher 

 education. She has long enjoyed the 

 prestige and embodied the talent, but 

 not until now has she possessed the 

 material facilities for entering upon the 

 work. With the present accession of 

 an equipment which cannot be fully 

 utilized in the established undergradu- 

 ate work, it is natural and certain that 

 her attention will be seriously given to 

 the work of post-graduate instruction. 



THE COLLEGE MUSEUM. 



By H. H. RUSBY. 



It would be interesting to review the 

 origin and growth of our museum de- 

 partment, and to associate with its history 

 the names of the predecessors of the pres- 

 ent generation of members. The object 

 of this communication however, is to 

 direct attention to the present state and 

 condition of the museum, its assumed ob- 

 jects with the proposed methods for carry- 

 ing them out, the means at our disposal 

 for so doing, and our requirements for the 

 future. 



Long before the removal of the col- 

 lege to its present quarters, its museum 

 had ceased to be fully available for use, 

 owing to the inaccessibility of its contents 

 as the growing demands for laboratory and 

 recitation space crowded it farther into the 

 background. Not only was the influx of 

 additional material checked, but that on 

 hand deteriorated, and much of it entirely 

 spoiled. Hence, our first duty in our new 

 quarters, as the specimens were encased, 

 was to cast out the worthless material 

 and replace it by new. 



This work, with the limited time at 

 command, occupied several weeks. The 

 instruction duties of the term then crowd- 

 ing upon us, museum work had to cease, 

 except as to effecting an alphabetical 

 arrangement of the different classes of 

 products sufficiently in advance of their 



respective study in the pharmacognosy 

 room. After the holidays our time was 

 found to admit of a little further sys- 

 tematic work, and through the generous, 

 efficient and extended assistance of many 

 members of both the senior and junior 

 classes, a satisfactory arrangement has 

 now been effected. Although the work of 

 exchanging and cleaning bottles and re- 

 labeling has still to be done, the museum 

 is really in a working condition, and its 

 value as an aid in practical instruction 

 has been beyond estimate, even in the 

 case of the present senior class. 



Between 500 and 600 specimens have 

 been recently added, and in no case do 

 these represent duplicates in the strict 

 sense of the term . Handsome collections 

 of duplicates have in the meantime been 

 picked out for the Museum of the Pharma- 

 ceutical Society of Great Britain, and for 

 the government museum at Melbourne, 

 in return for specimens already communi- 

 cated by those institutions. A set of cot- 

 tons, including herbarium specimens and 

 commercial fibres illustrative of forty-five 

 of the principal varieties cultivated in the 

 United States and South America, has 

 been forwarded to Calcutta for a special 

 study by Dr. Watt, the government re- 

 porter on economic products. 



Our museum at the present time repre- 

 sents almost exclusively crude or semi- 

 crude products. The productions of 

 pharmaceutical and chemical art are un- 

 fortunately almost entirely wanting, and 

 it is greatly to be hoped that arrange- 

 ments may be made for adding these ex- 

 hibits of the other depaitments, partly in 

 separate cases, and partly in connection 

 with the crude products yielding them, in 

 such manner as to represent so many 

 completed series. The Materia Medica 

 Department is itself a frequent sufferer 

 from its inability to refer readily to such 

 products, and probably the other depart- 

 ments would find that some mutual 



