Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/218

212, though he offered the suggestion that the best use of the books would be secured if they might be separately shelved from other classes of books and if a catalogue of them and the other pre-Linnean books of the library might be printed, so that persons wishing to make use of them might know where they were to be found. Visitors to the library are more interested in the quaint volumes of this part of its contents than in any other, and investigators have called its treasures into use on many occasions, not infrequently writing from a distance for transcripts of passages that they have needed to use, but have not been able to consult elsewhere. Sometimes, for days at a time, students of particular groups of plants long cultivated, have been occupied with the camera, reducing to unimpeachable form their quotations from these books. Quite recently, it has been found possible to nearly double this collection, by the purchase of a similar collection formed by a gentleman in Europe, and the catalogue of the Sturtevant library—made and printed some years ago in compliance with the suggestion of its donor, which was considered of the greatest importance—will be supplemented by a list of these later acquired works. Very touching was the last thought of Dr. Sturtevant for the garden. Knowing that death was at hand, he took from their cabinet the last and greatest of his treasures, his manuscript card references to the literature of cultivated plants, and himself packed them in a safe manner for shipment, giving instruction that they should be forwarded to the garden immediately after his death. May the institution never be less worthy than it then was of such confidence! To go into details concerning the library at large would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that, based on the small but well selected library bought by Dr. Engelmann for Mr. Shaw many years before his death, and augmented by the gift of the libraries of Engelmann, Sturtevant and the director of the garden as well as many