THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 217 



forms and places by the use of perhaps a scant score of species, is all 

 that the average mind carries away from the greatest botanical estab- 

 lishment. The difference between five hundred and five thousand 

 species in a collection is utterly lost on the casual observer. Let 

 him, however, wish to see some particular plant that he has chanced 

 to read of, and the difference becomes evident. To the botanist, even, 

 the difference between one thousand and ten thousand species is not 

 readily perceptible until he has need of some particular thing, which 

 the larger collection may afford while the smaller is almost certain 

 to offer only disappointment. 



However large or small it may chance to be, any collection is 

 useful or valueless according as it does or does not give information 

 as well as please the eye. Curiosity, alone, prompts nearly every 



A Named Specimen*. 



observer to look for the name and native home of a plant that he sees 

 growing in a garden. Much more than this is desired by some, and 

 could be added profitably for all were it not for the fact that more 

 deters the ordinary visitor and so defeats the very object for which 

 it is offered, by keeping him from reading at all. No small part 

 of the usefulness of a botanical garden lies in giving information 

 that is not sought, and that the recipient would not himself think of 

 seeking, but which reaches him through such natural channels that 

 he unconsciously acquires not only it, but the habit of looking for the 

 same kind of information about other things, and for more on the 

 particular one that he has first become interested in. One of the 

 principal objects of the founder of the garden therefore is served by 

 the simple presentation of a named collection of attractive and attract- 

 ively placed plants, which educates while pleasing those who see it. 

 This is varied by the provision of special collections that are tempting 



