FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 25 
of the plan of planting — which exemplifies the sequence of 
Orders in the Bentham and Hooker classification, the walks 
in this part of the grounds have not yet been made, and 
are not likely to be constructed until the trees are well 
developed and increasing resort to this collection indicates 
a need of them, since it is thought better to afford the 
comfort of a turf walk through the grounds as long as 
possible, than to provide at once the harder artificial paths 
that will ultimately be necessary. 
NAMING AND LABELING PLANTS. 
One of the most important and difficult features of 
museum administration is the provision of adequate labels 
with the specimens that are displayed. A collection of 
living plants is essentially a museum collection, but the dif- 
ficulty of naming and labeling them is far greater than in 
the case of a museum in the ordinary sense — where they 
may be kept under lock and key, or of a zoological garden 
in which the number of both species and individuals is 
relatively small while the latter are usually large and of 
sufficient individual value to lead to the prompt replacement 
of those which may die. The naming of collections in 
gardens of any size is notoriously bad, except for the 
relatively few that are being critically studied, and the 
Missouri Botanical Garden is probably not much better or 
worse than comparable institutions; but an effort has been 
made from the first to see that each plant or clump of 
plants is provided with a legible label giving its common 
name, the scientific name under which it was received — 
standardized by the Index Kewensis where possible, its 
geographical range, and a key number by which its indi- 
vidual history may be traced in the office records.* In this 
way, if the name has been correctly ascertained, sufficient 
information is given on a small and unobtrusive label to 
* Rept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 6 14, 15. 
