THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



rangle on North Broadway just across from Col. Thompson's 

 magnificent estate. The building that will form the southern 

 boundary and that is now approaching completion is, however, 

 typical of all of them and as it alone will accommodate thirty or 

 more investigators, work should soon be under way in consider- 

 able volume. 



As a matter of fact, one investigation of considerable interest 

 to garden lovers is already being carried on in charge of Dr. L. O. 

 Kunkel, the head of the Institute's pathological department. This 

 is a study of Aster "yellows" which is causing such havoc among 

 home gardens and commercial plantings. On the assumption that 

 this disease, like some of the other "mosaic" maladies that re- 

 semble it, is carried by some insect pest, Dr. Kunkel is not only 

 growing a field of Asters under various conditions and careful 

 scrutiny, but is also maintaining groups of healthy and diseased 

 plants in batteries of insect-proof shelters, in each of which he is 

 rearing colonies of a particular kind of insect known to frequent 

 Aster plants. At present these investigations are being pursued 

 on part of the garden plot of the neighboring Country Club ; later 

 they will be continued in the greenhouses of the Institute. 



Those greenhouses and the other laboratory facilities of the 

 Institute buildings offer material for a series of articles that would 

 warm the cockles of the heart of every reader interested in labora- 

 tory methods, technique and equipment. The individual research 

 rooms for the various workers are each equipped with everything 

 that the most ardent scientist could desire : a distilled water tap, 

 outlets for gas, electricity (both no and 220 volt currents), high 

 and low pressure steam, compressed air, suction (to create a 

 vacuum) and cold air to provide for refrigeration nearly down to 

 the zero point are distributed to every room from central sources. 

 Certain rooms (and one of the greenhouses) have a piped supply 

 of carbon dioxide gas (secured from the "washed" fumes of one 

 of the boilers) while the chemical laboratories, in which painful 

 accidents sometimes occur, are provided for just such emergencies 

 with a special system of instantaneously operating sprinklers or 

 showers. 



Down in the labyrinthine basement are chambers where any 



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