52 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
felt that there is danger in our material growth, unparalleled 
in the history of the world, unless guided and influenced 
by something higher and more enduring, which will save us 
from the fate so graphically portrayed in Byron’s well- 
known lines : 
‘¢ There is a moral to all human tales; 
’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past. 
First freedom, and then glory — when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption — barbarism at last, 
And history, with all her volumes vast, 
Hath but one page!”’ 
Henry Shaw knew the refining, elevating and broadening 
influence of the study of Nature in her more pleasing mani- 
festations. He drew inspiration from the voiceless lips of 
flowers, and appreciated the value and need of these same 
influences to the community at large. 
The Missouri Botanical Garden and the subsidiary School 
of Botany give St. Louis proud preéminence in matters 
which all good citizens must appreciate. The older botanic 
garden and arboretum at Cambridge do not excel it and 
nothing else approaches it on the continent. The national 
botanic garden at Washington is, as such, a farce and a 
disgrace. Its chief function seems to be to furnish bou- 
quets and plants to congressmen and their friends, and its 
influence has so far been destructive — not helpful — of all 
effort looking to the establishment of a truly national and 
creditable garden. This Missouri garden and school will 
prove a material and perpetual monument to Shaw’s prac- 
tical wisdom. But valuable as they are and will ever be, I 
doubt whether they will have more enduring or important 
influence on the country at large than the lesson of his life 
as manifested in the three characteristics which I have indi- 
cated ; and it seems to me that it must have been a patri- 
otic and underlying sense of this fact which prompted, as 
much as anything else, the provision for these annual feasts. 
His work had otherwise insured the keeping of his memory 
as fresh and green as the May foliage he loved so well — 
