ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS.
5
Dried plants are not readily exhibited, and if exhibited are
not generally attractive, It is true they may be mounted in
frames and glazed, but they require much space for their display
upon the wall. A preferable mode is to hinge the glazed frames
to an upright standard, so that they be made partially to revolve.
The proper course, however, is to preserve the specimens in an
herbarium, and to consult them as books may be consulted in a
library.
Fortunately our Club possesses a good collection of dried
plants, preserved in eight cabinets, now in the Stratford Museum.
This herbarium includes the important donation of specimens
due some years ago to the generosity of Mr. J. C. Shenstone ; it
contains also the late Mr. Sewell's collection, presented by his
widow ; Mr. E. J. Powell's herbarium, and Dr. Varenne's
collection of Cryptogams. I understand from Mr. W. Cole that
he is about to arrange these herbaria in two series—the one a
general collection of British plants for the use of the student ;
the other limited absolutely to the Flora of Essex.(5) Our local
herbarium will be invaluable to future botanists, inasmuch
as we possess representatives of plants from numerous localities
in Essex now built over or otherwise lost to science.
A large number of our Essex specimens have been obtained
from the Forest district, but it hardly seems desirable to remove
these to the Forest Museum, inasmuch as there they could
scarcely be exhibited to advantage. Although an herbarium is
clearly of the highest value to the student of systematic botany,
it is hardly a suitable object for public exhibition. Indeed Prof.
Weiss, of Manchester—a very high authority—has said "I regard
the Herbarium as not forming part of a Museum."(6) Probably
the ordinary visitor would find good coloured plates of the
flowers of the Forest more serviceable than dried specimens ; for
these have generally lost to a large extent their colour and even
their shape, so that the tyro would be more likely to identify
his specimen from a well-executed coloured plate than from the
dried plant.
It is said, I believe, that among English counties Essex
stands second only to Herefordshire in the interest of its Fungi.
(5) On the arrangement of dried plants see a paper by Mr. E. M. Holmes, F.L.S., on
"The Arrangement of Herbaria." Report of Museums Association, Sheffield, 1899, p. 63.
(6) "The Organization of a Botanical Museum." By F, E. Weiss. Hep. Mus. Assoc,
Manchester, 1892, p. 25.