18 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
tained, on the whole, in as creditable a manner as in 1895, 
in some respects the Garden has not been as attractive to 
the casual visitor as it was the year before. Asa result of 
the most destructive hailstorm that has ever been experi- 
enced at the Garden, some 6,000 lights of glass were broken 
on the 21st of May last, the falling glass doing incalculable 
damage to many of the plants, which were further exposed 
to the weather for a considerable time. Cacti and other 
plants which are sheltered under glass during the winter, 
but which had been placed in the rockeries and elsewhere 
before the storm, were either destroyed or so badly bruised 
that it is impossible even yet to count the final loss. Some 
idea of the force of the falling hail may be obtained from 
the statement that the ribbed glass on the roof of the Lin- 
nean house, nearly a quarter of an inch thick, was in con- 
siderable part broken. 
Closely following this storm, the tornado of May 27, 
which caused great loss of life and property in and about 
St. Louis, devastated a considerable portion of the Garden. 
While the grounds, fortunately, were not actually traversed 
by the cyclonic funnel, but were exposed only to the strong 
northwest gale which accompanied it, the violence of the 
wind was such that a number of the structures on the 
grounds were either unroofed or totally wrecked, while 
some 450 trees, many of them of large size, were wholly 
or practically destroyed, and a large percentage of those 
left standing were seriously broken. A more graphic view 
of the destruction of trees may be obtained from the state- 
ment that 186 cords of firewood have been prepared from 
the more workable trunks and larger branches of the trees 
removed. Aside from the direct injury, it is probable 
that no small number of those left have suffered from 
unwonted exposure to the strong sunlight of last summer 
and the winds of the present winter, so that many more 
are almost certain to require removal during the next year 
or two. It has been necessary to expend all told $4,479.36 
in such storm repairs as could be made, and the loss in 
