that better protected the specimens, adding, 
“The money value and cost of these specimens 
is small in proportion to the expenditure of 
intelligence, technical knowledge and enthu- 
siasm necessary to procure them, and it is dis- 
couraging after all the labor which has been 
expended in getting them if they are allowed to 
go to ruin in the Museum.””° 
Although work remained to be done, and to 
Sargent’s dismay, Dill, the collection’s chief pre- 
parator, caretaker, and de facto on-site curator 
for twenty years, left the museum for his native 
Nova Scotia in 1902. To facilitate interpretation 
of the specimens, museum director Herman C. 
Bumpus began an inventory of the wood collec- 
tion in 1903”’ and enlisted Roy W. Miner from 
the Department of Invertebrate Zoology for the 
Jesup Collection 37 
Cross-sections of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum, left) and coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) flank the entrance 
to Forestry Hall. The giant sequoia is the only specimen from the Jesup Collection now displayed at the museum. 
task. Even at that time, the museum’s growing 
bias toward other facets of natural history, to 
the neglect of botany, was apparent to Bumpus, 
who frankly acknowledged the economic ento- 
mology and wood collections as the entirety of 
the museum’s botanical holdings.’® The “For- 
estry Department” (comprising essentially the 
collection itself) was without a dedicated cura- 
tor until 1907, when Alfred C. Burrill, an ento- 
mologist by training, was appointed to oversee 
the exhibit of woods.” 
In 1909, Mary C. Dickerson was hired as 
curator of the Department of Woods and For- 
estry and served in that capacity for a decade.®° 
During her editorship of the American Museum 
Journal, forestry was several times a featured 
topic. In her 1910 guide to “Trees and Forestry,” 
AMNH RESEARCH LIBRARY DIGITAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 5299 
