162 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



your scientific men ; about 1850 to 1855. And when Hook 

 at this magnificent bequest for science, I can only recall 

 how earnestly these men were working, how untiringly they 

 struggled for success. The geologists and paleontologists 

 of your latitude have left comparatively little of tangible 

 record in the way of collections to mark their own time. 

 Only one of my own friends. Doctor Engelmann, can be 

 said to have his memory perpetuated in this grand bequest 

 of Mr. Shaw. Nevertheless, it is impossible, gentlemen, 

 to separate one science from another. The sciences must 

 go hand in hand. You will put into the organization of 

 your Botanical Garden some men, at least, with a knowledge 

 of chemistry as well as of the geological relations of the 

 soils, because it is absolutely impossible for an individual 

 or a school to know on what soil to grow plants success- 

 fully and to improve their condition unless he knows some- 

 thing of the composition, the chemical nature and geolog- 

 ical oriffin of that soil. 



Now, it is too late to more than suggest what ought to 

 follow, — what I think should follow such a bequest as 

 this. You live here, gentlemen, in a city whoso magnitude 

 is so far beyond what one could have expected forty years 

 a2o that it seems to dominate the West. It will not belong 

 before your city will bo the greatest city in the West. You 

 have this one grand thing, a Botanical Garden and a School 

 of Botanical Science. Now, will you, gentlemen of St. 

 Louis, allow the Botanical Garden, which every one loves 

 and admires, so far to absorb all interests that you will for- 

 get other sciences, your geology and mineralogy, — features 

 more directly important in their commercial and economic 

 aspects, — will you forget these? And I want to say one 

 word here in regard to your Geologist and your geological 

 survey. It may be a little out of place, but it has come 

 directly to me in this way. My acquaintance in St. Louis 

 in 1850 to 1855 shows that you had here one botanist pre- 

 eminent ; it showed also that you had several geologists and 

 paleontologists, Doctor Prout, Professor Shumard and some 



