Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/194

180 The number of visitors to the gardens during the year amounts to one and a half million, according to newspaper reports. The gates, six in number, are open from noon until dusk. The administrationand care of an establishment of this character near a great center of population require the closest organization and the most scrupulous attention to detail on the part of the executive. In this matter tradition as well as current testimony speaks of the rigid manner in which the numerous necessary regulations are enforced. The general plan of the grounds is shown in Plate VI.

When organized chiefly for research the botanic garden differs in many essential features from the one described above. From this point of view, and with regard to advantages of geographical position and botanical possibilities, the garden at Buitenzorg in Java occupies a foremost position. Originally founded by the Government of Holland in 1817, for the purpose of testing the economic value of plants indigenous to the colonies of the East Indies, and for the distribution of seeds, plants, etc., after the customary manner of such institutions, it has widened its scope and developed its facilities until almost all branches of purely scientific and applied botany may be pursued to advantage within it.

The Buitenzorg Garden is situated within a few degrees of the equator, and by reason of the elevated areas included within its different divisions furnishes suitable conditions for the growth in the open air of plants native to latitudes as high as forty or fifty degrees. The luxuriance of the growth of plants in the lower tropical area may be imagined when it is stated that the average temperature is 85° Fahrenheit, and the yearly rainfall amounts to twelve feet. Of the eleven hundred acres available for the purposes of the garden, an area of about one hundred and seventy-three acres is devoted to experiments with cultivated plants, one hundred and forty-eight to the botanic garden proper,