©N NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS. 5 



Dried plants are not readily exhibited, and if exhibited are 

 not generally attractive, It is true they may be mounted in 

 frames and glazed, but they require much space for their display 

 upon the wall. A preferable mode is to hinge the glazed frames 

 to an upright standard, so that they be made partially to revolve. 

 The proper course, however, is to preserve the specimens in an 

 herbarium, and to consult them as books may be consulted in a 

 library. 



Fortunately our Club possesses a good collection of dried 

 plants, preserved in eight cabinets, now in the Stratford Museum. 

 This herbarium includes the important donation of specimens 

 due some years ago to the generosity of Mr. J. C. Shenstone ; it 

 contains also the late Mr. Sewell's collection, presented by his 

 widow ; Mr. E. J. Powell's herbarium, and Dr. Varenne's 

 collection of Cryptogams. I understand from Mr. W. Cole that 

 he is about to arrange these herbaria in two series —the one a 

 general collection of British plants for the use of the student ; 

 the other limited absolutely to the Flora of Essex. (5) Our local 

 herbarium will be invaluable to future botanists, inasmuch 

 as we possess representatives of plants from numerous localities 

 in Essex now built over or otherwise lost to science. 



A large number of our Essex specimens have been obtained 

 from the Forest district, but it hardly seems desirable to remove 

 these to the Forest Museum, inasmuch as there they could 

 scarcely be exhibited to advantage. Although an herbarium is 

 clearly of the highest value to the student of systematic botany, 

 it is hardly a suitable object for public exhibition. Indeed Prof. 

 Weiss, of Manchester — a very high authority — has said " I regard 

 the Herbarium as not forming part of a Museum. " (6) Probably 

 the ordinary visitor would find good coloured plates of the 

 flowers of the Forest more serviceable than dried specimens ; for 

 these have generally lost to a large extent their colour and even 

 their shape, so that the tyro would be more likely to identify 

 his specimen from a well-executed coloured plate than from the 

 dried plant. 



It is said, I believe, that among English counties Essex 

 stands second only to Herefordshire in the interest of its Fungi, 



(5) On the arrangement ot dried plants see a paper by Mr. E. M. Holmes, F.L.S., on 

 "The Arrangement of Heroaria." Report of Museums Association, Sheffield, 1899, p. 63. 



(6) " The -Organization of a Botanical Museum." By F. E. Weiss. Rep. Mus. Assoc, 

 Manchester, 1892, p. 25. 



