A TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 403 



itself from th\i noble task of addiug to our knowledge of nature, inde- 

 pendeut of any direct advantage, either present or future. 



A considerable part of this duty falls upon botanic gardens, especially 

 when they possess special advantages like that of Buitenzorg. We 

 said at the beginning that the adverse criticisms made against botanic 

 gardens would not apply to those of the tropics because the latter are 

 placed under quite special conditions. In fact, the short descriptions 

 which we have just given will suffice to make it understood that judg- 

 ing by Buitenzorg there is no attempt at making an immense collec- 

 tion of plants in abnormal conditions. It is true that in many divisions 

 of the garden growth has caused the trees to approach each other too 

 closely, but the specimens that suffer in this way do not at all remind 

 us of those slender, spindling specimens of hothouse growth attacked 

 by the learned critic. As to the conditions offered to plants it is evident 

 that there is a great difference between hothouses and a garden. Not 

 that the Hortns Bogoriensis offers to all its plants a perfectly natural 

 situation, but from that to abnormal conditions is a long way. It is 

 sufficient to recall that aside from young plants and the very few species 

 that are cultivated under shelter, all the plants grow in the open ground. 

 In the second place it is evident that the great number of vegetables 

 scattered over such a vast space implies the impossibility of giving a 

 factitious life to any one specimen by over care. In general it may be 

 said that every plant introduced into Buitenzorg with which the climate 

 does not agree ends by dying, — generallj^ in a very short time. The 

 plants that continue to grow in a tropical garden may develop more or 

 less well, but it is very rare that we have to admit that they are abnor- 

 mally developed, so the taxonomist and the morphologistcan study the 

 plants of the garden without fearing to fall every moment upon charac- 

 ters that are unnatural or disfigured by culture. In the rare cases of 

 doubt the herbarium is there to serve as a check and to allow a com- 

 parison with neighboring species not cultivated in the garden. In view 

 of the great number of tropical ligneous plants, the study of living spec- 

 imens has for the systematist some real advantages over the study of 

 herbarium specimens. The latter are necessarily but small fragments, 

 carrying, it is true, flowers and fruits, but very rarely showing poly- 

 morphism, so frequent in vegetation. The physiologist and the anato- 

 mist may make their researches on development, the play of functions, 

 and the minute structure of the plants of the garden without the fear 

 of being led into error by degenerations and reductions due to a life of 

 starvation and ill- health consequent on unnatural conditions. For this 

 sort of researches the absence of a dry season is of special advantage 

 to the garden of Buitenzorg. The periodicity shown in the successive 

 stages of the evolutionary cycle of a plant is there almost always due 

 to internal causes and quite rarely to the direct influence of external 

 causes. This is, for the phyto-physiologist, an advantage which he 

 does not find in the temperate zone and rarely in the tropics.. 



