BOTANY AT ST. LOUIS 247 



tions to this end. He even at one time planned a grand school of bot- 

 any with all the appendages and equipment necessary for a college of 

 botany. This was modified in its first inception, but has been carried 

 out to a degree. Very soon he built a botanical museum, bought her- 

 baria and built greenhouses in which tender and exotic plants might be 

 grown, while the grounds themselves were planted with many of the 

 more hardy species. In 1859 he secured the passage of an act of the 

 Missouri state legislature enabling him to deed or will to a board of 

 trustees such property as he might wish, to be used for the maintenance 

 of the Missouri Botanical Garden, as he prophetically named it. In 

 1885 he founded the Shaw School of Botany in connection with Wash- 

 ington University of St. Louis and provided for very close relations be- 

 tween the school and the garden. The estate deeded for the use of the 

 garden was valued at about one million two hundred and fifty thousand 

 dollars. This has increased very materially in value with the rapid rise 

 in real estate in and about St. Louis. From the small beginnings of a 

 private estate, the garden has developed until there were in cultivation in 

 1906, over seventeen thousand species and varieties of living plants; 

 fifty-five thousand books and pamphlets in the library, including a 

 very fine collection of pre-Linnfean works, and five hundred and sixty 

 thousand sheets of dried specimens. The garden has issued eighteen 

 annual reports, and is in exchange relations with nine hundred in- 

 stitutions interested in botany, gardening, horticulture or forestry. 

 The library is one of the finest of the botanical libraries of the world, 

 and all resources of the garden are placed at the free disposal of those 

 capable of using them. Thus Mr. Shaw's life-work has reached its 

 fruition, and a fitting memorial is rising steadily to more and more 

 impressive proportions. 



Henry Shaw-^ was born in Sheffield, England, July 24, 1800. He 

 was the eldest of four children. His father was a manufacturer of 

 grates, fire irons, etc., and owned a large establishment. Henry's early 

 education was obtained at Thorne, a neighboring village, and his favor- 

 ite place for study was an arbor in the garden. He was later transferred 

 to Mill Hill, about twenty miles from London. This was termed a 

 " dissenting " school, but was also considered one of the best private 

 schools in the Kingdom. He remained here about six years, leaving 

 probably in 1817, thus finishing his schooling. He studied while here 

 considerable Greek, more Latin, more than the average amount of math- 

 emathics, French, and undoubtedly German, Italian and Spanish. 

 With this scholastic training he began to assist his father at the home 

 establishment for a year, after which he accompanied him to Canada. 

 In this same year, 1818, his father sent him to ISTew Orleans, mainly to 

 investigate cotton raising. He stayed in Louisiana but a short time, 



=• Dimmock, Thos., Mo. Bot. Garden Report, 1 : 7-25, 1890. 



