24 TIMBER SPECIMENS. 
Cut the specimens thin and season very slowly. Put a radial cut into 
most cross-sections, otherwise it may be impossible to get them to season 
without cracks. Shape the specimens to show (1) the cross-section from 
bark to pith and with bark; (2) the slanting cross-section ; (3) a board 
cut radially; (4) a board cut at right angles to the medullary rays. Do 
not varnish the specimens. The grain 1s best brought up by french- 
polishing. In the absence of a skilled french-polisher wax or oil may 
be rubbed in. The simplest and easiest plan is a thin layer of ordinary 
brown boot-polish. This brings up the grain of Kauri nearly as well as 
french-polish. Choice specimens such as Kauri veneers should be kept 
in dust-proof glass cases. 
The Forest Office in Cape Town stands in the midst of a wood museum. 
Mr. R. G. Robinson, the late Chief Forester for the South Island, had 
a collection of wood samples at Tapanui better than any I have seen 
in the public museums. 
The best timber specimens to be seen now in New Zealand are at the 
office of the budding Forest Department in the Government Buildings, 
Wellington. Mr. Phillips Turner has rapidly brought these specimens 
up to the point of being a thoroughly instructive study. 
It will be recalled that when the Duke of Cambridge died a few years 
ago King Edward presented his residence at Kew to the nation, and it 
was turned into a wood museum. This has now developed into a good 
and improving collection of timbers growing and growable in the British 
Isles. The ‘‘ Cambridge’? Museum at Kew is popular. Classes from 
the technical schools are brought there for practical instruction. This 
museum is purely local (British); it is quite outside the great timber 
collections from all parts of the Empire in the old Kew Museum and at 
South Kensington. 
Now, if England, with its State forestry at least a century behind 
the best on the Continent of Europe, can have a local wood museum, 
surely New Zealand, with valuable national forests only awaiting de- 
velopment—forests that will eventually support a population equal to 
the whole present population of New Zealand (‘‘ Forest League ’”’ address, 
July, 1918, p. 3)—should have a national forest museum. 
FORESTS AND MINERALS. 
Compare the wood specimens in New Zealand museums with those 
in the Technological Museum, Sydney; and yet only two years ago 
forestry in New South Wales was behind such little forestry as there 
is in New Zealand. : 
A forest court well represented in a museum has a national import- 
ance, a public interest, and a nature-teaching far beyond geological 
specimens, native antiquities, and the trappings of savagery. Some- 
times one-third of a New Zealand museum is devoted to minerals. while 
the total value of all the minerals yet produced in New Zealand is not 
equal to the value of a dozen medium-sized Kauri forests (Official Year- 
book, 1915, p. 606, and the ‘‘ Value of Puhipuhi Forest ” at 66) 
And, what is more, many of the best mines are w Hae 1 
shown here (‘‘ Normal Kauri Forest ”), the 
tion will about quadruple in value in a hund 
have increased the value of their output more 
years, 
Forestry is not a private bus 
prizes held out by mining, 
orked out, whereas, as— 
Kauri forest under cultiva- 
red years. Prussian forests 
than tenfold in seventy-four 
ere siness, nor does it offer the sensational 
ut its steady yield surpasses mining in the end : 
