Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/216

210 the embellishment of the houses that are open to the public, makes possible increased beauty of the latter.

Vegetable gardening is not ordinarily attractive, and a truck garden is usually associated with compost piles, bad smells, and disorder. It is not necessary for this to be true, however, and the little vegetable garden connected with Shaw's Garden is not only not unsightly in itself, but it has from year to year afforded the means of cultivating in the fullest variety a number of kinds of vegetables. Here, for instance, were grown for several seasons all procurable varieties and spontaneous species of chiles, and the monograph on  Capsicum which the horticulturist of the establishment published as a result of the studies that he was thus enabled to make, takes rank as of value alike to botanists and gardeners. Here, too, have been grown, year after year, the chief varieties of beans that the world's markets afford, and on the plants so cultivated lias been based another and equally useful monograph, by the same gentleman. Mr. Irish. Though not classed as vegetables, sweet peas in all procurable sorts have been grown for like purposes of study in this enclosure, its seclusion affording needed protection of the plants while under observation; the thesis of one of the garden pupils, Mr. Rudolph Mohr, on this group of decorative plants, is of more than passing interest.

It is the lot of all living and growing institutions which give promise of prolonged existence, to have gifts of greater or less magnitude made to them. The Missouri Botanical Garden has not proved an exception to this rule. Even before the death of its founder, Dr. George J. Engelmann placed in the hands of the present director of the garden the invaluable herbarium of his father, the late Dr. George Engelmann. and shortly after the organization of the board of trustees