Summer Meeting. 21 



his lifetime or by will under the management of a board of trustees. 

 From this time the garden made a systematic and steady advancement 

 under the personal supervision of the founder to the time of his death 

 in 1889. 



About 1866, Mr. Shaw created the idea of establishing a park adja- 

 cent to the garden, and accordingly deeded to the city, on condition that 

 a certain sum of money should be given annually for its improvement 

 and maintenance, a tract of about 285 acres, or what is now Tower 

 Grove Park, Again, about 1883, Mr. Shaw conceived the idea of 

 establishing a school of botany as a department of Washington Univer- 

 sity "which should stand in such relation with the largely endowed 

 Missouri Botanical Garden and Arboretum as would practically secure 

 their best uses for scientific study and investigation to the professors and 

 students of the said school of botany for all time to come." This idea 

 took definite shape some two years later when in accepting Mr. Shaw's 

 proposal the trustees of Washington University established the Shaw 

 School of Botany and received from Mr. Shaw a deed of improved real 

 estate, the income from which is used to meet the expenses of the said 

 school. 



Mr. Shaw left most of his estate, appraised at about a million and a 

 third dollars as an endowment of the garden, consisting mostly in real 

 estate. Some in the business portion of the city yields a large revenue 

 but most of it is situated in the vicinity of the garden and yields no 

 income. The trustees named in Mr. Shaw's will consists of fifteen mem- 

 bers, ten of whom are designated by name, while the remaining five are 

 ex-oificio members, namely: Mayor of St. Louis, the Bishop of the 

 Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, the president of the Academy of Science, 

 the President of the Public School Board, and the Chancellor of Wash- 

 ington University of St. Louis. Vacancies are filled by the remaining 

 members, and all perform their duties without compensation. 



The garden proper contains about forty-five acres divided into six- 

 teen for the more especially decorative portion, twenty for the arboretum, 

 six for the fruiticetum, and three for the vegetable garden. There are 

 approximately eighty acres of meadow land next to the garden which 

 it is hoped will be added to the present area, twenty acres to be planted 

 to a representative collection of North American plants hardy at St. 



