WOODEN LIBRARIES.

Western Star, Issue 2152, 30 October 1897, Page 6

WOODEN LIBRARIES.

One department of the town museum at Cassel, Germany, is made up of the most singlar lot of books that ever greeted the sharp admiring eye of the bibliomaniac —a library of 500 volumes, each a perfect book made of a different kind of wood. The back of each volume is formed of the bark of its particular tree, the sides of the wood in its mature state, the top of young, immature wood, and the bottom of the same after having been dried and seasoned. When opened these remarkable books are found to be without leaves, the inside being a box containing the flower, seed, fruit, and leaf of the tree from which the box book has been made.

'Taking advantage of the idea illustrated in the wooden library at Cassel, Russia, employed a cabinet-maker during the entire winter of 1877-78 in making a library of the wood found in the extensive Russian forests. These were classified and arranged for the Russian exhibit at the Paris Expositions of both 1878 and 1889, As in the Cassel Library, this Russian wood collection showed the wood in its several growths, as well as fruit, leaves, and seeds, either natural or imitated in wax.