513
SI
28
THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
been referred to, you might well pronounce the endeavour madness. It is not necessary, however, that he should attempt this.
The naturalists who accompany our exploring expeditions, are not trained to identify on the spot every remarkable mineral, vegetable, and animal they encounter. In truth, seeing that it is strange objects which they are specially sent to discover, it is impossible that they should be forewarned of these novelties. It is counted enough that they are amply qualified to detect and preserve all the rare things which come in their way. Of some of these they recognise the full significance at the time, but the majority they send or take home for careful investigation by themselves or others. Besides those purely scientific agents, a large class of travellers of all professions aid natural history solely by sending home the objects with which it is concerned.
So important are the services of this class of naturalists to the cause of science, that under the auspices of Sir John Herschel, prompted by the Admiralty, a manual was drawn up some years ago by some of the ablest writers of the country, suitable for the guidance of all intelligent voyagers who may feel desirous to gather materials for our Natural History Museums whilst wandering in distant lands. In this volume instructions are given as to the objects worth collecting, and the observations worth making by those amateurs for whom the work is intended. But natural history includes a much wider range of subjects than industrial art, and it should be as easy to instruct travellers how to serve the latter as the former: that it is even more easy, I think will appear from the following considerations.
AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE.
20
The raw (and other) materials of Industrial Art are not after all very numerous. Food, clothing, fuel, building-stones, mortars, timber, clays, metallic ores, and some other minerals, drugs, vegetable extracts, dye-stuffs, manures, oils, acids, and alkalies, form the chief material pabulum of intelligent industry. Now even, if we suppose a young man sent with a roving commission to search for all of those materials throughout the world, it would not be difficult to teach him how to recognise each one, at least to the extent of ascertaining to what class it belonged. It would of course be still more easy to equip him intellectually for a search for some of them. He could only learn by actually looking at, tasting, touching, and otherwise handling the typical representatives of the objects which he sought to gather; but if he laid a foundation in this practical experience, he could afterwards in distant lands widely enlarge it, and