Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/687

Rh to a vase of orchids, apparently freshly cut, but whose freshness proved to be perennial, since they were the work of the elder Blaschka, who had made them for his wife some twenty years before this date! During all these years the flowers had stood uninjured from exposure to the air and dust of the room, though without even the protection of a glass shade. Here was a convincing argument in favor of glass models for the Harvard Museum.

After much consideration on the part of the Blaschkas, they consented to undertake, on their own terms, the preparation of a certain number of models.

In consenting to this, Leopold Blaschka was strongly influenced by his wish to afford his son further opportunities for carrying on his studies in botany, a science to which he had given much attention; another potent factor in gaining his consent being the kindly sentiment he had cherished for America since his early voyage to that country.

Feeling that he had accomplished the first and most important step in his mission. Prof. Goodale returned to America, and in the autumn of 1887 the first consignment of flower models reached him—shattered to fragments in the New York Custom House, whose inspectors had done their work "not wisely but too well!" The fragments were, however, sufficient to show the quality of the models, and to inspire much enthusiasm.

Among the first to appreciate the excellence of the models, both from an artistic and a scientific point of view, were the two ladies who later became known as the donors of the collection. At first, by their own wish, their names were not connected with the enterprise, which afterward took the form in which the public now recognizes and honors the collection—that of a beautiful and lasting memorial to a graduate of Harvard University, the late Dr. Charles Eliot Ware, of the class of 1834. Each successive step toward the accomplishment of this purpose has been attended by the happiest results, and no element has been wanting to give completeness to the collection.

The second consignment of models arrived, passed safely through the perils of the custom house, and proved satisfactory in every way.

The undertaking hitherto had been a personal experiment of Dr. Goodale's, and he has had from its very inception the entire charge of it. Under the new conditions new contracts became necessary, the final one of which, executed at the consular office in Dresden in 1890, engaged all the time of the two Blaschkas, thus securing a fixed number of models to be sent in two consignments each year, until the collection is completed. The time necessary for this completion is at present uncertain, owing