of useful and curious vegetable products,
which neither the living plants of the garden
nor the specimens in the Herbarium could
exhibit. Such a collection promised to
render great service to the manufacturer,
the druggist, the dyer, the weaver, the
cabinet-maker, and to artisans of every
description. Here they might find what hitherto
they had often sought in vain—at least a
truthful clue to, and some reliable information
respecting, the raw materials used or
useable in their respective trades, correctly
named, and accompanied by some account of
their history, origin, and native country.
The useful hint was carried out, and the
country now possesses an admirable, though
still adolescent Museum of Economic Botany.
Complete it never can be, until all the
vegetable treasures of the globe are thoroughly
ransacked, and are applied to every
purpose of which they are capable.

Such a museum is, in principle, a standing
armed manifestation against the aggressions
and intolerance of all sorts of selfish
mystification and humbug. Join the crowd who
throng the rooms any summer's afternoon,
and you will see whether or no the public
sympathise with the resolve to make the
results of botanical study available to all
world. Quackery is here delightfully unveiled
Where—oh where!—are the
Revalenta estates on which grows the Revalenta
Arabica? Alas! they have been absorbed
and annexed to the territories of John
Barleycorn and Jean Raisin. Wherever will
grow the Ervum lens, a plant which furnishes
lentil meal or flour of lentils, there are the
Revalenta estates! Enormous monopolies in
certain materials and drugs have long been
sustained by the concealment of the plants
from which they are derived. Instances will
occur to every one connected with arts and
manufactures. It is desirable for the public
good, that such tricks of trade should be
rendered impossible; and, in Sir William
Hooker's museum, we have often the article
produced labelled with a reference to its
living secreter in the garden or the
hothouses. The visitor receives twofold
gratification and redoubled instruction if, after his
walk amidst the plants, with their several
vegetable forms freshly imprinted on his mind,
he can enter an adjacent building, contemplate
their products, and see the uses which
man derives from them.

To begin with an instance of manifold
utility, you may inspect with your own
proper eyes the food and raiment, the milk,
the oil, the toddy, the cups and bowls, the
cordage, brushes, mats—in short, the three
hundred and fifty-six articles—as many as
there are days in the year—afforded by the
common cocoa-nut tree. It is difficult to say
what it does not afford.

                     " The Indian nut alone
    Is clothing, meat and trencher, drink and pan,
    Boat, cable, sail and needle, all in one."

You learn that the Larix Europsea furnishes
Venice turpentine; the Abies excelsa,
Burgundy pitch; and the Pinus palustris,
American turpentine. About gum Arabic,
if you are likely to travel in the East, you
may possibly help us to further information
For your guidance you had better look at
the samples, from various species of acacia,
no doubt, but of which the source has
probably in few instances, save where there are
names attached, been correctly traced as
derived from Acacia Arabica. The several
specimens of gum resins, Animi and Copals,
the origin of which is not known, are so
many advertisements entreating you to help
them to find their next of kin. Your kind
assistance is also requested to discover the
outward semblance of the trees which cut
up well into ornamental woods, and die
worth a deal of money. Other disconsolates
in search of relatives are the gamboges,
valuable to painters and pill- makers. Droll, that
patent medicines from unidentified trees
should decorate our interiors with brilliant
yellow! Pipe or Siam gamboge is supposed
to be derived from Garcinia Cochinchinensis;
lump gamboge, from Ceylon, is said to drop
from Gambogia Gutta. A more intimate
acquaintance with the gamboge family is
manifestly desirable, seeing that several of
its members, as the Mangosteen, bear fruit
reckoned by travellers the most delicious in
the world, and worth the journey from
England to the Malay Archipelago to taste
them, unless his Grace of Northumberland
will save you the trouble by asking you
to favour him with a call at Sion. But, doubt
and uncertainty are the exceptions here—
precise information is the leading principle.
Lo! the Chinese grass-plant (from which you
have the fibre or raw material, and the
manufactured cloth displayed) is no grass,
but in reality a nettle. The wood of which
cedar pencils are made is not cedar, but
Juniperus Bermudiana, and frequently J.
Virginiana. That powerful and much-
abused perfume, the essential oil of bergamot,
does not come from the odoriferous-leaved
herbaceous plant so common in rustic gardens,
but from the pear-shaped fruit of the
bergamot orange, Citrus Bergamica, whose
fragrant rind is often made into boxes.
Would you believe that syrup of capillaire is
prepared from hair? It is, though—that is,
from maiden-hair fern. Crab oil comes from
no crustacean living, but from the seeds of
Cazapa Guianensis. It burns well, but the
Indians smear their persons with it, as its
excessive bitterness repels insects. (Mem.:
to store your travelling dressing-case with a
bottle-full.) The beautiful substance called
Chinese rice-paper is under no obligations
whatever to rice, being the exquisite pith of a new
plant of the ivy family, Aralia papyrifera, only
found in Formosa, for the knowledge, and for
living plants of which, we are mainly indebted
to Sir John Bowring. What a cunning misleader