Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/197

Rh other property in and near St. Louis. The scope of this institution may be best illustrated by the following quotation from the will of its founder: “With a view to having for the use of the public a botanical garden, easily accessible, which should be forever kept up for the cultivation and propagation of plants, flowers, fruit and forest trees, and other productions of the vegetable kingdom, and a museum and library connected therewith, and devoted to the same and to the science of botany, horticulture, and allied objects.” It is connected with the Washington University, which has a School of Botany also endowed by Mr. Shaw in 1885. The botanic garden occupies an area of forty-seven acres. The grounds are laid out in such a manner as to be highly attractive, and as many as thirty thousand people have passed the gates in a single day. Much important work in plant taxonomy has been accomplished in this institution, and the facilities for work may be set forth in the following official statement:

“The herbarium is supplemented by a large collection of woods, including veneer transparencies and slides for the microscope. The library, containing about eight thousand volumes and ten thousand pamphlets, includes most of the standard periodicals and proceedings of the learned bodies, a good collection of morphological and physiological works, nearly five hundred carefully selected botanical volumes published before the period of Linnæus, an unusually large number of monographs of groups of cryptogams and flowering plants, and the entire manuscript notes and sketches representing the painstaking work of Engelmann.

“The great variety of living plants represented in the garden and the large herbarium, including the collections of Bernhardi and Engelmann, render the garden facilities exceptionally good for research in systematic botany, in which direction the library also is exceptionally strong. The living collections and library also afford unusual opportunity for morphological, anatomical, and physiological studies, while the plant-house facilities for experimental work are steadily increasing. The E. Lewis Sturtevant Pre-Linnæan Library, in connection with the opportunity afforded for the cultivation of vegetables and other useful plants, is favorable also for the study of cultivated plants and the modifications they have undergone.”

The New York Botanic Garden is the most recent acquisition to the list of these institutions in America. Its establishment was authorized by the Legislature in 1891, but the enabling act being defective, no steps could be taken in its organization until 1894. To comply with the act of incorporation, a sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was raised by privatesubscription, and then the Commissioners of Public Parks of New York City were authorized to set aside two hundred and fifty