1 86 THE PLANT WORLD. 



AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT 

 OF BOTANY IN NEW YORK CITY.* 



By Henry H. Rusby, :M.D. 

 Dean of the New York College of Pharmacy. 



II. The New York Botanical Garden. 



So eager was the desire of the early members of the Torrey 

 Botanical Club to observe how plants lived, that many of those 

 able to own gardens ignored vegetables and flowers, and main- 

 tained little botanical gardens at their homes. As succeeding 

 decades of extending settlement destroyed the localities which 

 had been so greatly prized, the demand for a botanical garden 

 arose independentl}- in the mind of every botanist, professional 

 and amateur. So early as 1874 the club appointed a committee 

 to act with the New York F^harmaceutical Association in re- 

 questing the city to establish such a garden in Central Park. 



As the educational side of our work grew in importance, and 

 especially in breadth, and as the student body doubled and re- 

 doubled, the cry for the garden grew equally loud from that di- 

 rection, and continued until at length it was satisfied. The great 

 value to Harvard and its work of the well-managed plot that it 

 utilized in this way was appreciated and often discussed at the 

 little meetings which gathered around the old pot stove in Pro- 

 fessor Newberry's room during his presidency of the Club. 



Under the influence of Columbia's progress, as already de- 

 scribed, it appreciated this want as much, probably, as any other of 

 our botanical elements. Its peculiar relation to the former Elgin 

 Garden was recalled in the public press. A contributor to the 

 New York Herald, of November 26 and 22, 1888, made an ear- 

 nest appeal for the recognition by the city of this great want. 

 Dr. Arthur Hollick, to whose faithful and self-sacrificing work 



* Portion of an address delivered before the Torrey Botanical Clnb at 

 a special meeting held on May 2^, 1906, in commemoration of the tenth anni- 

 versary of the commencement of work in the development of the New 

 York Botanical Garden. Concluded from the July number. 



