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mother, as well as the joys of a father. As President Healy 
has just said, whatever of progress and successful accomplish- 
ment the Garden may have made, during the six brief years of its 
childhood, is due in largest measure to the generous support of 
Mr. White and his two sisters; and to his personal thought and 
attention, and sympathetic interest in every phase of its work; 
but for their timely and generous gift we should not be able to 
lay the corner stone of this sorely needed building in the year 
1916, nor for an indefinite period thereafter. 
The guiding ideal of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is tersely 
expressed in the sentiment placed upon the small gate signs at 
each of our entrances: “For the advancement of botany and the 
service of the city.” 
From the beginning until now an earnest endeavor has been 
made to promote the activities of the Garden in both of these 
directions, but with a special care to making the institution as 
useful as possible to its local constituency. 
A botanic garden is of value to its city by the mere fact of 
being a garden—a spot of beauty, and an additional bit of nature 
in the midst of the artificial and the less attractive aspects of 
city life. By diffusing popular education, by cooperating with 
the public and private schools, by cooperating with the Depart- 
ment of Parks in the care of trees and shrubs, in offering formal 
instruction in pure and applied science, in advancing our knowl- 
edge and love of plants, a botanic garden may not only make it- 
self useful, but may supply a need which not only ought to be 
felt by every city, but which every body of intelligent and pro- 
gressive citizens will feel; for a botanic garden ministers to fun- 
damental needs which cannot be met by any other kind of an in- 
stitution. 7 
But, even though supported in part by public taxation, such an 
institution ought not to be local in its interests nor its influence. 
A botanic garden like this ought not only to supply local needs 
in ways suggested above, but ought also to be an important fac- 
tor in the botanical world as a whole. In fact it ought to be 
part of the pride and glory of the city that its botanic garden 
commands a favorable recognition that is world wide. 
What are Kew Gardens in London, the Jardin des Plantes in 
