840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he did at his own individual expense, as early as 1801. It was 

 situated about three miles and a half from the city of New York. 

 It consisted of about twenty acres of land on the middle road.* 

 It was selected from its varied soil as peculiarly adapted to the 

 cultivation of the different vegetable productions. The grounds 

 were skillfully laid out and planted with some of the most rare 

 and beautiful of our forest trees. An extensive and ornamental 

 conservatory was erected for the cultivation of tropical and 

 greenhouse plants, as well as those devoted to medical purposes, 

 more especially those of our own country. 



"At this time there were under cultivation nearly fifteen hun- 

 dred species of American plants, besides a considerable number 

 of rare and valuable exotics. To this collection additions were 

 made from time to time from various parts of Europe as well as 

 from the East and West Indies. It was the intention of the 

 founder of this beautiful garden, had his means been more ample, 

 to devote it to the sciences generally, more especially those of 

 zoology and mineralogy. This, however, he was compelled from 

 want of fortune to relinquish, hoping that the State of New York 

 would at some future day be induced to carry out the plan as 

 suggested by him similar in all respects to that of the Garden of 

 Plants in Paris ; but in this he was disappointed. The State pur- 

 chased the garden from him, but, like many other public works 

 unconnected with politics, it was suffered to go to ruin. While it 

 was in his possession it afforded him many a pleasant hour of 

 recreation, and served to abstract him from the cares and anxie- 

 ties of an arduous profession." Frederick Pursh, author of the 

 Flora Septentrionalis, was for several years curator of this 

 garden. 



A jail society, which had existed in New York to supply pro- 

 visions to prisoners for debt, was developed by Hosack into the 

 Humane Society, with broader aims and means. The City Dis- 

 pensary received no less his care and attention. He vigorously 

 advocated a separate hospital building for contagious diseases, 

 the strict enforcement of quarantine regulations, the substitution 

 of stone piers for wooden ones, and urged that the city's sewers 

 should discharge at the outer ends of the piers instead of at the 

 bulkhead line. 



His friends often wondered that Dr. Hosack found time to 

 contribute so much as he did to the literature of his profession. 

 At an early period he began the publication of the Medical and 

 Philosophical Register, a quarterly journal, in which Dr. John 

 W. Francis was associated with him. He afterward published 



* The location is given in Mrs. Lamb's History of New York as lying between Fifth and 

 Sixth Avenues and stretching from Forty-seventh to Fifty-first Streets. 



