SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 23 
at the same time, and this part of the lawn will be properly 
graded and sodded as soon as the new soil has had time to 
become well settled. 
While this work was under way, a steam outfit was 
placed under one end of the small greenhouse in the vege- 
table garden, already referred to, from which pipes were 
laid for the purpose of heating the residence and museum, 
thus relieving both buildings from much dirt, and material- 
ly lessening danger from fire, —a matter of particular im- 
portance so long as the library and herbarium are located 
in the latter building. The location of the boilers is also 
such that when a new building shall be provided for the 
herbarium and library, it can probably be conveniently 
and economically heated from the same point by en- 
larging the pit and setting an additional boiler, thus 
confining all dirt and danger from fire to a single isolated 
point. 
The southern location and consequent warm average 
temperature of St. Louis are in many respects favorable 
to horticultural pursuits. But the frequent extreme cold 
of a portion of the winter and the dry air and occasionally 
severe drought of summer, as well as the peculiarly heavy 
nature of the soil where the Garden is located, render the 
task of making it a representative garden unusually diffi- 
cult. Trees which thrive in England, and even so far north 
as Denmark, are occasionally destroyed by a single severe 
winter here. This is notably true of the Sequoias and 
other Californian evergreens. Even the Magnolia, which en- 
dures the coast climate as far north as Philadelphia, can be 
grown in the Garden only as a shrub, bent down and cov- 
ered during the winter; and Paulownia, which apparently 
does as well in Brooklyn as the Catalpa, is usually killed 
back during the winter in St. Louis, so as rarely to flower. 
After some forty years of existence, the Garden is still 
weak in native herbaceous plants... It need, therefore, excite 
little surprise that few permanent additions have been made 
to the grounds during the past year. Before this can be 
