Museums and the Public

Abstract

THERE is an aspect of museum work and museum service to the community of which little is heard and which nevertheless occupies a considerable part of the duties of the staff and is of some national importance. It concerns minor inquiries of many sorts which can be answered only by a specialist, and the answers to which may be of some value to the inquirers. Some of the miscellaneous economic problems placed before the Department of Botany in the Free Public Museums of Liverpool are instanced by H. Stansfield in an article in the Museums Journal (40, 215; 1940). A young woman was given a cigarette, collapsed on smoking half of it and remained unconscious for two days. The cigarette had been home-made by a man who used the leaves of a plant growing accidentally in his garden; the botanist identified the plant as Indian hemp, the source of “hashish”; and the plant had grown from the refuse of a parrot's cage containing remains of a mixture from a chance packet of bird-seed. A point of insurance was decided by the relative inflammability of teff grass and ordinary hay. Questions of adulteration in manufactured chicory, inquiries about possible new sources of iodine, about diseases of bulbs, the qualities of timber for various specific purposes, the control of weeds, the identification of consignments of unrecognized materials, indicate the variety of information which is expected of a museum botanist.