Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/223

Rh forms and places by the use of perhaps a scant score of species, is all that the average mind carries away from the greatest botanical establishment. The difference between five hundred and five thousand species in a collection is utterly lost on the casual observer. Let him, however, wish to see some particular plant that he has chanced to read of, and the difference becomes evident. To the botanist, even, the difference between one thousand and ten thousand species is not readily perceptible until he has need of some particular thing, which the larger collection may afford while the smaller is almost certain to offer only disappointment.

However large or small it may chance to be, any collection is useful or valueless according as it does or does not give information as well as please the eye. Curiosity, alone, prompts nearly every

observer to look for the name and native home of a plant that he sees growing in a garden. Much more than this is desired by some, and could be added profitably for all were it not for the fact that more deters the ordinary visitor and so defeats the very object for which it is offered, by keeping him from reading at all. No small part of the usefulness of a botanical garden lies in giving information that is not sought, and that the recipient would not himself think of seeking, but which reaches him through such natural channels that he unconsciously acquires not only it, but the habit of looking for the same kind of information about other things, and for more on the particular one that he has first become interested in. One of the principal objects of the founder of the garden therefore is served by the simple presentation of a named collection of attractive and attractively placed plants, which educates while pleasing those who see it. This is varied by the provision of special collections that are tempting