144 
NATURE NOTES. 
It is not very easy to explain the unfolding of these leaves 
on paper, but it is very easy to trace it in nature, and in early 
spring the leaves may be found in almost all stages, growing 
close to each other. Whether any one who had not seen the 
mature leaf could guess what these tiny folded leaflets would 
develop to I do not know, but I certainly think that anyone who 
had to devise how a flat trefoil leaf could be best stowed away,, 
would be much puzzled to do it as daintily as has been done by 
the thousands and thousands of tiny green sorrel leaves which 
have sprung up over our island this spring. 
All the illustrations (except 4A, which is a front view) show 
the same side of the leaf, and the successive positions of each 
may be traced. 
Agnes Fry. 
THE KEW MUSEUMS. 
(Continued from ft. 123.) 
AVING said so much on the uses of the Museums, let 
me now say a few words on their arrangement. The 
adoption of a scientific classification, rather than a 
commercial one, would not perhaps be the best were 
the Museum situated in a trading or manufacturing centre, but 
it has its manifest advantages forming part and parcel of the 
first botanical establishment in the world. In its earlier days 
the museum arrangement was that of the system of De Can- 
dolle ; but some ten or twelve years ago the whole of the large 
collection in Museum No. 1 was re-arranged on the system of 
Bentham and Hooker’s great work, the Genera Plantarum, and 
since then, on the completion of that work, the contents of No. 2 
Museum were re-arranged on the same system. The same 
arrangement prevails in the Herbarium or collection of dried 
plants, so that the classification adopted by Bentham and 
Hooker dominates the entire collections. The advantage of 
this is apparent, as an acquaintance with the sequence of the 
orders, genera and species in the Museums aids in the ready 
usefulness of the Herbarium, and vice versa. 
The scientific classification has the advantage not only of 
bringing together plants of similar structure, but also those con- 
taining similar economic properties, for it is well known that 
those plants botanically allied mostly possess some well-defined 
property characteristic of them ; thus in the Malvacea or Mallow 
family, the roots and stems of many of them are mucilaginous, 
represented by the common Marsh Mallow, and nearly all 
of them contain useful fibres in their inner barks. In the 
Sapotacea we look for milky juices in the stems which harden 
into gutta-percha, and in the seeds of the same group of plants 
we expect to find oils that may be useful for illuminating 
