8 ESSEX FUNGI IN THE EPPING FOREST MUSEUM.
Any one who knows the Forest must feel that the Forest alone
could furnish interesting and valuable botanical material sufficient
to fill all the present room. It is always prudent to attempt to
walk, before trying to run, but the walking has been done, and
the child wants to go a-head. When suggestions are made, or a
visitor is desirous of offering suggestions, or even proffering help,
the desire is checked and almost smothered by the reflection that
it is in vain to think of additions or proposals when every corner
seems to be reasonably full. We are not deceiving ourselves, or
making a vain boast, if we affirm that four times the present
space could soon be profitably filled with the spoils of the Forest
in all departments. It is then, and in the New Era, of the "good
time coming," when we shall be able to show to our children real
stuffed specimens of all the Birds of the Forest, to point out to
them the Badger, and the Otter, or the bones of the Wolf, or
even rebuild the skeleton of the primeval Elephant from its grave
at Ilford.
Of course Essex has plenty to show in a local Museum,
plenty dug up from the past, as well as selected from the present,
for the instruction of the future. Above all stands that bogie
"wall space" for if it were not that, we should be thinking of
large Photographs of Forest scenery, of Fairlop Oak, of historic
old trees, of things which time will sweep away and never can
be replaced. Are there no old towers, no historic spots, no
remarkable places, no old engravings, maps, or charters, to be
represented on the walls of the Essex Museum, or was there no
old Essex, before the Earthquake of 1884 ? If there arc relics of
Essex in good Queen Bess's days, let them be gathered in from
the four corners of the County, to decorate Queen Elizabeth's
Lodge. But—we must not talk of it—there is no room for
more.
This must be our closing lament. If it is not true this year
it will be next. There is no more room, not even for the bones
of Boadicea, if they should be discovered at last in Dick Turpin's
Cave. No room even for the Antiquities of the "Wake Arms"
or a pair of Highwayman's Pistols. There is no room for a
Colchester native of the time of Constantine the Great, or a pot
of coins from Offa's Dyke. There is no more room—not even to
speculate—there is only room left—to cry for more !