FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 31 
THE MUSEUM. 
As has been reported from year to year, this single 
part of the plan of Mr. Shaw and of the Board of Trustees 
has been neglected because of the necessity of using the 
existing small museum building forother purposes. When- 
ever it shall be freed from such use, I hope to arrange in 
the building an instructive and attractive synoptical collec- 
tion, supplementing those furnished by the living plants of 
the Garden. In the meantime, considerable reserve 
research material, not of a character to be publicly displayed, 
is being received and stored in one way or another, and 
utilized as occasion offers. 
RESEARCH AND USE OF FACILITIES. 
As was contemplated in the first outline of the policy of 
the Board, quoted above, the principal research work of 
the Garden has been concentrated on the North American 
flora, and during the five years just ended, five mono- 
graphic studies of groups of plants pertaining wholly or in 
large part to this flora have been published in the Garden 
Reports. Horticultural botany ~ has likewise received 
attention, as have the ecology and teratology of plants. 
For several years the Garden has been made the head- 
quarters for a laboratory directed by Dr. Hermann von 
Schrenk ofthe United States Department of Agriculture, in 
which much useful work has been done on the diseases 
of cultivated plants, the causes and prevention of decay 
in timber, and other economic questions of vast material 
importance, Dr. von Schrenk having provided, among 
other things, a greenhouse eepeoially, devoted to experi- 
mental plant growth in these directions. 
Provision is now being made for a phyto-chemical labor- 
atory, by the renovation of the basement of the old museum 
building, which proves well adaptable to this purpose; and 
