as represented by plants, and there is no more important region 
of nature. The more we know about plants, the more intelligent 
we become in handling them. I have known scientific explorers 
who discovered a new country and mapped it, but no one at the 
time recognized it as good for anything. Years afterwards it was 
discovered that it was rich in possibilities. 
Years ago an Austrian monk, working in his monastery garden, 
discovered some interesting behavior in the plants he was breed- 
ing. He recorded his facts and his conclusions in an obscure 
journal, and no one paid any attention to it. What could be 
expected from a monk pottering in his garden? Years after- 
wards, the contribution was discovered, and today it is the basis 
of most of our work in the study of heredity, and this in turn 
has made our agriculture scientific. No one knows what may turn 
up in a garden like this one of yours. It is a gold mine of oppor- 
tunity. See to it that it is cultivated. 
IDEALS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR A BOTANIC 
GARDEN 
By C. Stuart GAGER 
I hold in my hand a rare and, especially on this occasion, 
exceedingly interesting little volume. Its title is “ Address at the 
inauguration of the Hunt Botanical Garden, in Brooklyn, N. Y., 
delivered in the Athanaeum at the vernal exhibition of flowers 
of the Brooklyn Horticultural Society, on the evening of April 
11, 1855.” By Francis Vinton. Sixty-two years ago, almost to 
a day, was inaugurated the first effort to establish a botanic 
garden in Brooklyn. 
Apparently no enterprise could have been launched under more 
atispicious circumstances. Thomas Hunt, after whom the Garden 
was named, endowed it with fifty thousand dollars in money, and 
one third of the ground which the garden was to occupy, esti- 
mated to be worth at that time ten thousand dollars. This was 
a large endowment and a specially munificent gift for the year 
1855. 
