CHAPTER IV 
MUSEUMS 
The Museums at Kew — three in number — are intended to show, 
as well as their limits will permit, the uses of plants to mankind. 
. Here are exhibited not only the raw material furnished 
^ by the plant, but the finished product and illustrations 
of the processes of manufacture. It is an interesting 
fact that the first Museum of Economic Botany ever established was 
the present Museum No. II. at Kew. It soon had many imitators, 
not only at home, but in the colonies and foreign countries as well. 
The latest and most imposing of these was the Imperial Institute, so 
far as the sections devoted to plant products are concerned. Like 
nearly all the principal scientific features of Kew, it had its origin 
in the fertile brain of Sir William Hooker. 
In 1846, as is elsewhere recorded, the present No. II. Museum 
with the adjacent ground — which up to that time had been a Royal 
kitchen-garden — was transferred to the Botanic Garden, and placed 
under Hooker’s charge. The building had been used partly as a 
dwelling-house, partly as a fruit-room. It was then that Hooker 
conceived the idea of using it for the exhibition of the economic pro- 
ducts of the vegetable world. A remarkable ignorance exists amongst 
ordinary people as to the origin of many of the commonest articles in 
daily use. A museum containing such things as fibres, dyes, drugs, 
foods, and so on, with material illustrating the processes of prepara- 
tion or manufacture, and when possible the completed product also, 
all properly named and accompanied by explanatory notes, would 
certainly prove of great educational value to the community. That 
is the popular side. To the manufacturer, the chemist, the botanist, 
and physician it would have a still deeper interest and value. 
In an account of the life and labours of his father, Sir Joseph 
Hooker records the beginning of the Museums of Economic Botany 
at Kew. Sir William himself had a large collection of interesting 
objects which he had formed for the use of his class in Glasgow. Mr. 
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