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municipal authorities, includes a number of private research 
rooms, in addition to other features having the same implication. 
It is anticipated that, within one year from the publication 
of this report, we shall be occupying the completed building. 
Plans should be developed at once for putting the building to 
the full uses for which it is intended. 
Our work of popular education is now thoroughly organized; 
that it will move forward by both pushes and pulls, as well as by a 
well-developed momentum of its own, is now assured ; our danger 
to guard against is a smug contentment in feeling that we are 
accomplishing our full duty and making the most of our oppor- 
tunities by only this. The director, therefore, urges upon the 
Committee that, from the standpoint of the fundamental wel- 
fare and vitality of the Garden, no more important problem will 
be before us during the next five years, than the organization 
here of botanical research, and making ample provision for its 
support. This Garden, with its strategic location and the unsur- 
passed equipment it will shortly possess, should become one of 
the recognized centers of botanical investigation in the United 
States. 
Public Support of Research—That scientific research—the ex- 
tension of knowledge for its own sake as well as for its prac- 
tical applications—should receive public support is self-evident 
to those who have given thoughtful consideration to the matter. 
This is not the place to present the evidence im extenso, but a 
passage from Louis Agassiz, one of our greatest citizens, as well 
as one of the world’s greatest scientists, may appropriately be 
quoted in this connection: 
“ And let me say that the community should foster the purely 
intellectual efforts of scientific men as carefully as they do their 
elementary schools and their practical institutions, generally con- 
sidered so much more useful and important to the public. From 
what other source shall we derive the higher results that are 
generally woven into the practical resources of our life, except 
from the researches of those very men who study science, not for 
its uses, but for its truth.” 
