A TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 397 



which it is now applied, although it was originally used for mineralog- 

 ical collections. It is composed of a hall occupying the body of the 

 principal story, and of two wings. On the floor of the hall are upright 

 closets along the wall, and glass cases in the center containing collec- 

 tions both botanical and technical. Part of the exhibits are dried and 

 part are preserved in spirits. The herbarium occupies the gallery 

 which runs around the entire hall, 4 metres above the floor. The dried 

 plants are not, as in Europe, placed in portfolios, but in tin boxes in 

 order that they may be better protected against insects and moisture, 

 those great enemies of collections in tropical countries. As a matter of 

 course, corrosive sublimate, naphthaline and carbon bisulphide are con- 

 sidered at Buitenzorg as important allies in this constant fight against 

 insects. The number of tin boxes containing the herbarium exceeds 

 1,200. Each box contains, on an average, 100 specimens. One of the 

 wings of the building is set apart for the service of the museum, a divi- 

 sion which has for its chief the adjunct director of the garden assisted 

 by a naturalist. The other wing, a little more than 10 metres long and 

 nearly 11 metres wide, is wholly devoted to the library, which contains 

 more than 5,000 volumes. This is a considerable number when it is 

 remembered that it is a special botanical library, although books of 

 general natural history and transactions of academies of sciences such 

 as those of Paris, Berlin and Loudon, are not wanting. In the matter 

 of descriptive botany an attempt is made to obtain, besides classical 

 and indispensable works, whatever relates to the flora of the extreme 

 Orient. The books on general botany are supplemented by the most 

 recent treatises and publications on morphology, anatomy, physiology, 

 and vegetable paleontology. But the special wealth of the library of 

 the garden at Buitenzorg is the series, generally complete, of all the 

 reports and botanical reviews of the first rank at present published in 

 Dutch, French, English, and Italian. The special isolation of a botan- 

 ical garden situated at equally remote distances from the scientific cen- 

 tres of the Old and the New World makes it necessary to attend care- 

 fully to the maintenance of the library, keeping it well up to the 

 advances of science. 



There are three laboratories, and there will soon be a fourth, for in 

 accordance with the proposition of the colonial government accepted 

 by the mother country, the force in the garden of Buitenzorg is to be 

 increased by two new functionaries, a botanist and a chemist, whose 

 task it will be to furnish by patient and careful investigations scientific 

 data as to the useful plants of tropical countries and their culture. The 

 laboratory intended for the chemist is not yet opened. Behind the 

 museum in a special building is the pharmacological laboratory where 

 a pharmacal chemist temporarily attached to the garden carries on 

 investigations upon alkaloids and other curious and useful substances 

 which tropical plants contain. Considering the small amount of exact 

 knowledge that we have concerning these substances this happy inno- 



