KEW GARDENS. 
213 
Two periodicals are published in connection with Kew, the 
“ Botanical Magazine,” in which six new or interesting plants 
fit for garden cultivation are figured every month. This is 
now in its 112th volume, and contains nearly 7,000 coloured 
figures, all drawn from living plants. In the “ leones 
Plantarum,” of which the seventeenth century is now in 
progress, the more interesting new plants that come to Kew 
in the form of dried specimens are figured and described. In 
the same buildings as the dried plants there is as full a collection 
of all the books and pamphlets on botany as the authorities 
have been able to get together. The number of volumes is 
about ten thousand. This occupies four of the rooms of the 
old palace. There is also a large collection of drawings, 
arranged in portfolios in systematic order. For naming living- 
plants from the Garden these drawings are very much used, 
for of course they show the colouring of flowers far better 
than the dried specimens possibly can. 
Museums of Economic Botany. ' 
There are three Museums in which are stored the 
collections of timbers and economic products. The principal 
Museum is the large three-storeyed building which stands in 
the centre of the Garden on the opposite side of the sheet of 
ornamental water to the Palm House. This is devoted to the 
products of the 150 natural orders of Dicotyledons, arranged 
in glass cases in systematic order. A similar collection of 
the products of the Monocotyledons and Cryptogamic natural 
orders is contained in a smaller museum, which stands at the 
north end of the Herbaceous Ground. In the old Orangery, 
not far from the main gate and the palace, are the large 
specimens of timber. Many of the specimens in these 
museums are derived from the great Exhibitions of 1851 and 
1862, and from the India Museum. In addition to timbers, 
textile fabrics, food grains, medicines, and models of edible 
fruits, these museums contain the specimens of fruits and 
seeds which are too large to be mounted on the sheets of 
paper at the Hebarium. 
Value of Vegetable Products. 
Just consider for awhile what a large proportion of the 
food and clothing of mankind has to be derived from the 
Vegetable Kingdom. Last year the value of the agricultural 
crops grown in Great Britain alone amounted to £186,000,000. 
The value of the grain and flour imported amounted to 
£67,000,000. These two added together amount to over 
£200,000 000, or an average of £6 per head for each person 
