NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DHIECTOR. 



19 



RESEARCH AND THE USE OF FACILITIES. 



Under the fixed policy of administration, a number of 

 Garden employees have given such time as could be spared 

 from necessary maintenance duty to research work, some of 

 the results of which have been published in the last volume 

 of the Garden Report, or are in course of preparation for 

 publication. It was my own privilege, early in the year, 

 to spend two months in a field study of the Agaves of certain 

 of the West Indies, the results of which are now being brought 

 into form for publication. 



The engagement of Professor Blankinship, reported a year 

 ago,* made possible a long delayed study of the enormous 

 mass of herbarium material collected in Texas by Ferdinand 

 Lindheimer between 1849 and 1851, which came to the 

 Garden many years ago as a part of the Engelmann herbar- 

 ium. Supposed at first to represent duplicates, these speci- 

 mens were found to be actually unnamed plants intended for 

 sale to the subscribers to Lindheimer^s " Flora Texana 

 Exsiccata " of sixty years ago, with few exceptions unrep- 

 resented in collections, and even lacking from Engelmann's 

 own herbarium. To their study, Dr. Blankinship has brought 

 a conservative spirit consonant with that of the great botanists 

 Engelmann and Gray, whose publications on Lindhcimer^s 

 earlier collections have given them classic value; and his 

 recently pubUshed paper on this later materialf is enriched 

 by an authentic and appreciative sketch of Lindheimer, the 

 collector, whose earlier known work has also been correlated 

 with that which is now first made known. 



As in earlier years, the faciUties of the Garden have been 

 freely placed at the disposal of visiting botanists, and the 

 usual loans have been made and office assistance rendered 

 to those who were unable to come to St. Louis for study. 

 Perhaps the most important use to which the Garden has 

 yet been put by visitors was a study of transpiration, com- 

 parative with results reached in the desert regions, to which 



* Rept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 18 : 22. 



t Rept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 18 : 123. 



L 



