(26) 



world, and crude wood-products such as pipes, canes, shoes, 

 sandals, utensils, and carbons or charcoals ; the other being a 

 synoptic collection illustrating North American dendrology. 



2. THE MUSEUM OF SYSTEMATIC BOTANY 

 This occupies the entire second floor of the building, and 

 is designed to illustrate by specimens, drawings and photo- 

 graphs, types of all the natural families of plants, beginning 

 with those of the simplest structure and ending with the most 

 complex. It consists of three series of objects: 



(a) The general synoptic collection. 



(b) A series of microscopes showing selected specimens. 



(c) Illustrations of the local flora. 



a. Synoptic Collection. This is designed to illustrate the 

 plant world. A series of characteristic objects is installed 

 as a basis for illustrating each plant-family. These speci- 

 mens are accompanied as far as possible by plates, drawings 

 or photographs, while on the shelves are arranged additional 

 objects, such as flowers, fruits, woods, specimens of fossil 

 plants and models of various organs of plants, all intended 

 further to illustrate the structural characteristics of the dif- 

 ferent groups. This collection is arranged according to the 

 most natural and thus far most generally satisfactory inter- 

 pretation of the interrelation of the plant-families ; it may 

 be considered as falling into two main series, namely, the 

 flowerless or spore-bearing plants and the flowering or seed- 

 bearing plants. 



The flowerless plants fall into three subkingdoms : (i) the 

 Thallophyta, in which the plant-body is not differentiated 

 into stems and leaves, represented by the slime-moulds, the 

 bacteria and other micro-organisms, the seaweeds, the fungi 

 and the lichens ; (2) the Bryophyta, represented by the 

 mosses and their immediate relatives ; and (3) the Pteri- 

 dophyta, including the ferns and the fern-allies. 



The Thallophyta (cases 1 to 36), may be defined as plants 

 without true roots, stems or leaves, but notwithstanding their 

 simple structure they exhibit an infinite variety of form and 

 color. 



