SECTION' OK FORESTRY COLLECTIONS. 345 



(L*) The absence of an appreciation of the value and character of 

 forestry in our country, which calls for the education of the people; 



(3) The value of object lessons in educating - the people, which is the 

 main function of the Museum. 



While other art exhibits of the Museum are more in the nature of a 

 record of that which has been accomplished, and serve to show the 

 progress of the art through the various stages of its development, and 

 incidentally to serve the educational object of furthering general and 

 special knowledge in the respective branches, I conceive the object'of 

 forestry collections at present to be principally educational. Forestry, 

 as an art, being hardly yet known in our country, the exhibits will have 

 to lead up to the art by making known its aims and needs, and by 

 facilitating an acquaintance with the objects upon which it is to be ex- 

 ercised — the forest and its component parts; also by exhibiting the 

 experiences and practices of other countries, in order to stimulate the 

 application of the art in our own country. The sequence in which, 

 therefore, the exhibits are to be secured, will have to be with reference 

 to their educational value in the direction outlined. 



RANGE OF FORESTRY COLLECTIONS. 



To define and circumscribe the range within which forestry collec- 

 tions ought to be kept, it will be well to find the fields on which it bor- 

 ders, from which it borrows, and upon which it works. 



Other museums, like that at Kew, have a branch of economic botany; 

 a part of this field must be occupied by forestry collections. Forest 

 botany is a branch of economic botany, and forms naturally also an 

 object of forestry collections; and such branches of physiological bot- 

 any as apply to tree-growth belong also in its sphere of representation. 



Technology and chemistry, as far as these bear upon the application 

 of wood in the arts, upon the derivation of by-products from wood, 

 upon increasing the durability of wood-material, etc., come under the 

 consideration of the forestry collector, only, however, in so far as they 

 exhibit or influence the quality of the raw material, to produce which, 

 the art of forestry is called into requisition. 



While the application of wood in all branches of human art would 

 furnish an endless array of manufactured objects for exhibit, if seems 

 expedient to make use of such exhibits in forestry collections, only so 

 far as they illustrate the capability of the material for a certain class 

 of manufactures. 



Machinery and engineering find application in the exercise of the 

 art, and as far as they are used exclusively in the transformation of the 

 raw material of the forest, in the production of the forest crop, or bear 

 upon forestry work in general, they must find representation in forestry 

 collections. 



With these limitations in mind, we may propose a preliminary classi- 

 fication of exhibits under the following sections : 



