EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 23 
paragraph of the second clause of his will * «‘ that scientific 
investigations in Botany proper, in vegetable physiology, 
the diseases of plants, the study of the forms of vegetable 
life, and of animal life injurious to vegetation, experi- 
mental investigations in horticulture, arboriculture, etc., are 
to be promoted,”’ has not been lost sight of. From the 
first, such small part of my own time and of the time of 
my assistants as could be spared from necessary adminis- 
trative and curators’ work has been devoted to research, as 
a result of which a number of papers of greater or less 
extent have been published. An enumeration of such pub- 
lications as have issued from the Garden or have resulted, 
in the main, from work done at the Garden since the 
organization of the Board, will appear elsewhere in the 
Eighth Report. 
To provide a channel for the suitable publication and 
distribution of such papers, it was early decided by the 
Board to regard the historical volume issued in 1890 f as 
the first of a series of annual reports.{ These volumes at 
first contained the official administrative reports, a detailed 
account of certain annual events provided for in the will of 
Mr. Shaw but not directly concerned with the Garden, 
and such scientific papers as might have been prepared dur- 
ing the year. Shortly before the sixth volume was issued, 
after a careful re-examination of the entire question of 
publication, and a decision by the Board that it was not 
only proper but desirable that the Garden should continue 
the printing of annual reports and memoirs, it was decided 
that, except when specially ordered published,§ the anni- 
versary reports should be omitted from the annual volume, 
* First Report, 37. 
+ “The Missouri Botanical Garden.’’— Commonly cited as the First 
Report, or the Report of 1890. 
¢t Second Report, 3; Third Report, 3. 
§ As, for instance, was the case with the able address of President 
Henry Wade Rogers, — Seventh Report, 113. 
; 
