38 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
Beginning as the private grounds of a country gentleman 
some forty years ago, the Garden was soon enlarged to its 
present size. A most interesting account of what was then 
doing is to be found in the leading horticultural journal of 
that time, — Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, — for Sep- 
tember, 1859. But a greater enlargement came at this 
time in its scope; for with the extension of the grounds 
came the erection of a museum and library building, and 
its partial; equipment under the stimulus and advice of 
the then Director of the famous Kew Gurdens, — Sir 
William Hooker, — and of Mr. Shaw’s friend and our 
fellow townsman, the late Dr. George Engelmann. 
Inspired by the Chatsworth garden, —the residence of 
generations of cultured English gentlemen, —the Missouri 
garden took inthis enlargement a step far in advance of its 
prototype, adopting as its new model the public garden at 
Kew, which from the residence and pleasure grounds of 
royalty had become, largely under the wise guidance of the 
man then at its head, the leading institution for scientific 
botany in the world. The history of its establishment, so 
far as the motives therefor are now obtainable, and the in- 
structions in the will which places it on a permanent basis, 
show that Mr. Shaw hoped for a somewhat similar career 
of usefulness for the Garden founded by him. His plans, 
which occupied his mind during half a life-time after the 
outline was adopted, are left to us in a will which im- 
presses all who have read it as a marvel of far-sightedness 
and wisdom, not the least evidence of which is his forbear- 
ance in defining minutizw, leaving details, as he expresses 
it, ‘to those who may have to administer the establish- 
ment, and to shape the particular course of things to the 
condition of the times.’’ 
Among these plans, a prominent place was given to hor- 
ticulture, in the broadest sense of the word, — the art of 
growing plants, and the sciences on which the successful 
practice of this art must rest. A personal acquaintance 
with Mr. Shaw during the last five years of his life, and a 
