694 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [February 24, 1872, 
grams, with hold outlines of the most prominent plants, 
could he drawn by the teacher or scholars. Before 
long, I trust that cheap cabinets of specimens for teach¬ 
ing purposes will he purchasable at reasonable prices. 
After the passing of the Pharmacy Act of 1868, by which 
law every intending pharmacist is obliged to undergo 
examination, a great need of cheap portable collections 
of materia medica was felt. Two or three firms under¬ 
took to remove this difficulty, by making up sets of such 
specimens, and selling them at as low a price as possible. 
One of these firms, Messrs. Evans, Lescher and Evans, 
of Bartholomew Close, have very kindly, at my request, 
specially prepared two of their collections, modified 
somewhat for general use. These are lying on the table. 
The medicinal preparations are left out, and other sub¬ 
stances could easily be added. 
Happily for this country we have at Kew one of 
the finest and most complete museums of economic 
botany in Europe, which, it is not too much to say, is 
the object of unqualified admiration from all who are 
judges in these matters. We are indebted for it to the 
exertions of the late Sir William Hooker, and the present 
Dr. Hooker, C.B. ; and if ever a society of economic 
botanists should be formed, no more appropriate name 
eould be found for it than that of “ The Hookerian So- 
eiety.” But this by the way. I mention the Kew 
Museum here simply to direct the attention of teachers 
to it, as one of the finest aids and supplements to their 
teaching. No better holiday as regards health and en¬ 
joyment, and no pleasanter way of communicating infor¬ 
mation than, if the distance is not too great, to take 
their scholars to Kew. It could even be held out as an 
inducement to general good behaviour and progress in 
the study I am advocating. The catalogue of the museum 
and gardens is full of information. 
Unfortunately, from various causes, the fact that 
museums should be, and if rightly managed are, power¬ 
ful instruments of education, is lost sight of. The 
teaching capabilities of good museums are very great, 
but these have, till recently, been looked upon as recep¬ 
tacles for curiosities. Frequently it has happened that, 
when a person has had anything which has been out of the 
common, or that he could better employ the space it 
occupied, he has sent it off to a museum, without any 
•consideration as to its fitness. And thus museums have 
been looked upon almost in the light of a showman’s 
collection, of which it may be said— 
“ Monsters of all sorts here are seen, 
Strange things in nature, as they grew so, 
Some relics of the Sheba Queen, 
And fragments of the famed Bob Crusoe.” 
One of the very best speeches I have ever met with on 
"the subject of the proper use of museums is one by Sir 
Turtle Frere, given at the opening of the Bombay 
Museum in 1862. I quote the following:— 
“ Let us remember this museum is designed to be no 
mere collection of rarities and curiosities, at which crowds 
may gaze in vacant and resultless astonishment; you 
have purposed that it shall be a great engine of educa¬ 
tion,—in the words which you have so aptly quoted from 
the great lawgiver of scientific research, a ‘ College of 
Inquiry,’as distinguished from a ‘ College of Reading.’ 
Here, as in a microcosm, you will collect specimens of 
whatever in art or nature ministers to man’s wants or 
■occupies man’s thoughts. The student will here read, 
not through the imperfect medium of language, but in 
the products themselves visibly placed before him, the 
history, so far as human eye can trace it, of each won¬ 
drous process and product of nature. He will here 
trace, step by step, how the intellect of man, in various 
.ages and in various countries, has turned those processes 
and products to human use, and how art has striven to 
impart to the result of her labour somewhat of that 
Divine image of those more than human characteristics 
«of beauty, variety, perfection, and adaptation, for which 
the rudest of mankind ever yearn, and which the most 
civilized never fully attain to.” 
Local museums, when properly conducted, are of great 
use, but no such museum is complete unless economic 
botany is fairly represented. 
In concluding my remarks on the educational aspect 
of the question, I would say that not only should the 
subject be taught in our elementary schools, but also in 
all educational establishments, in our universities and 
colleges, and that greater facilities should be given, by 
series of lectures and other means, for the acquisition of 
some knowledge of this subject by the masses. 
We next pass to the claims which economic botany 
has on the attention of the commercial world. At least 
half of our commerce consists in the gathering in and 
sending forth again raw and finished materials derived 
from the vegetable kingdom. The claims of economic 
botany, therefore, rest not only on the fact that a know¬ 
ledge of these products would give additional interest 
to every-day life, but upon the other fact, that if a more 
systematic attention were paid to the subject, the result 
would be largely beneficial to commerce. There is, how¬ 
ever, a great absence of information amongst those en¬ 
gaged in commerce, concerning the very products on 
which their fortunes are built. All who have ever had 
any experience in endeavouring to ascertain the history 
of any substance, know full well the difficulty. Let me 
not, however, omit here to do full justice to the willing¬ 
ness with which all possible information .is given. I 
have never yet gone to any merchant or broker who 
has not evinced the utmost readiness to afford me every 
assistance in any inquiry. And yet the fact remains, 
and what I would endeavour to urge on the attention of 
all concerned is, that the possession of at least the rudi¬ 
ments of a knowledge of economic botany is as necessary 
and as valuable as that of any other branch of know¬ 
ledge which is deemed at present essential; and that no 
one should enter, either as master or servant, into com¬ 
mercial life, where vegetable products form the articles 
of trade, without some knowledge of them, and the 
greater the amount the better. 
There are many duties inseparable from the calling of 
a merchant besides that of making money, which is the 
mainspring and end of all commercial enterprise. The 
merchant has to gather from the ends of the earth the 
workable materials required for the sustentation of our 
arts and manufactures; also to send forth the finished 
products, for the preparation of which the most perfect 
mechanism and the highest scientific knowledge has been 
brought to bear. In this, whilst seeking his own ends, 
he has necessarily, and possibly unconsciously, acted as 
a great civilizer of the world. But he should not be 
content with receiving hap-hazard what others send— 
he should use his best endeavours to extend and improve 
existing sources of supply, and to open up new ones. 
The mainstay of commerce, and the existence and on¬ 
ward march of civilization, are bound up with the exchange 
of workable materials. The merchant procures from a 
country substances which are produced, either spon¬ 
taneously or by cultivation, in quantities above and be¬ 
yond that required for home consumption—which, but 
for their capability of utilization elsewhere, would be so 
much waste and useless material—and carries them to 
another country where a want of them exists. By this 
exchange, the superabundance in the one country is 
made to supply the scarcity in the other, and thus he 
acts as a great civilizing agent by promoting commercial 
intercourse. What a state of living death would the 
world be in if each country, within its own area, satisfied 
all the wants, natural or acquired, of its inhabitants! If, 
for instance, Captain Cook’s statement that “if an in¬ 
habitant of the South Sea has planted ten breadfruit- 
trees during his life, he has fulfilled his duty to his 
family as completely as a farmer amongst us who has 
every year ploughed and sown, reaped and threshed; 
nay, he has not only provided bread for his own life- 
