THE MISSOURI BOTAMCAL GARDEN. 



3 



smaller collections, it has been increased by annual purchases of con- 

 siderable size, selected with discrimination from the libraries of some 

 of the world's greatest botanists, as these, through the death of their 

 owners, have come into the market, until it now comprises over 16,000 

 volumes and 20,000 pamphlets, valued at over $60,000 and fairly sym- 

 metrical in all fields of botany and the sciences that must be taken into 

 consideration in botanical work, as well as in gardening, landscape 

 work, horticulture, forestry, greenhouse construction, and the like. 

 Large as it is, however, it is so far from being satisfactorily complete 

 for the uses it is put to that a sum greater than its present valuation 

 could be spent on it within a few years, if the money were available 

 and the works needed were in the market, without having even then 

 a surfeit of the good things that such a library, destined for research 

 purposes, should offer the busy man who, to use them, must be freed 

 from too great care and delay in searching them out and placing his 

 hand on their contents. Strongest in the library, as would be ex- 

 pected from the fact that the Garden is a garden and possesses a 

 large herbarium and is at present more concerned with the systematic 

 study of flowering plants than with other subjects, are the departments 

 devoted to floras and monographs; those difficult things to have at 

 hand, series of journals and proceedings in whole or in part devoted 

 to botany; and the compendiums of gardening and garden plants; but 

 there are in this country few fuller collections of treatises on plant 

 morphology and physiology, and the works on the ecology of the flower 

 are probably nowhere surpassed in completeness of representation. 

 From the first establishment of the school of botany in the university, 

 it has been the policy to spare no trouble or reasonable expense to 

 make the library as complete as possible in any field in which special 

 work is taken up, and the result is that each piece of research accom- 

 plished has been marked by a corresponding growth in the library. 



A herbarium is an uninteresting collection to the average person 

 who does not need to use it, whether he be a botanist or not. In 

 envelopes, or glued or bandaged down on sheets of paper are thousands 

 of more or less fragmentary plants, sometimes moldy or worm-eaten, 

 for time works havoc with all organic matter, and usually much faded. 

 And yet not even the library is more indispensable for the worker on 

 the species that they represent; for they are the real plants, and not 

 some one's interpretation of them. The choicest part consists always 

 of the original specimens preserved by an author when describing and 

 naming a species or genus, for however his description or figure may 

 have erred, this type persists as a record showing the true generic and 

 specific characters. An herbarium is not always a conclusive source to 

 which to turn for final information, for the author mav have and 



