IRature IRotes : 
Zbc Selbonte Society’s ^aoa3inc. 
No. 19. JULY 15, 1891. Vol. II. 
THE KEW MUSEUMS. 
MONGST the two million persons more or less who 
annually enter the gates of the Royal Gardens at 
Kew, a large proportion, it must be owned, are visitors 
bent on pleasure or recreation, who find what they 
seek in the beautiful and well-kept grounds. But there are 
others — and a very large percentage, too, of the total — who know 
how and are fully able to appreciate the uses of this great 
national establishment as a centre of scientific and practical 
botanical work, and as the readers of Nature Notes are 
amongst this more intelligent section, a few words on the im- 
portance of the Museums of Economic Botany and some hints 
how to use them will, we have no doubt, be useful. 
Unfortunately, it has been the custom in days gone by to 
associate museums with all that is dry and uninteresting, and 
alas ! this stigma has had some justification. As there is a 
right and a wrong way of doing everything, so there is a right 
and a wrong way of arranging and managing, or, too often, mis- 
managing a museum, and the wrong way seems to have been 
most generally adopted, especially, perhaps, in provincial towns, 
where they are even now frequently made receptacles for objects 
of a very varied character, popularly known under the generic 
name of curiosities, which teach nothing and are only harbours 
for dust. 
Museums, to be of any practical value, should have special 
objects in view, namely, to illustrate to the fullest what we may 
learn from books, and so to leave as lasting an impression on 
the mind as an object lesson or a well-illustrated lecture ; and, 
further, museums should show us, not only how much, but also 
how little, we yet know of the world and its products. 
The value of special museums confined to illustrations of 
any one branch of science appears to have been grasped by Sir 
William Hooker when founding the Kew Museums of Economic 
