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Thirty organizations have held meetings at the Garden, either 

 to facihtate lectures on our work or closely related topics, or to 

 include inspection of our collections in their program. 



Innumerable artists have frequented our grounds for the 

 purpose of sketching or painting views of the landscape or of 

 individual plants and flowers. 



Numerous commercial concerns in the City have been supplied 

 with technical information on plant life and horticulture, in 

 some cases where investments of large amounts of capital were 

 involved. 



Should one inquire whether the Cit\^ really wants the Botanic 

 Garden — whether it is serving a useful purpose, the answer is 

 found in the annual record of achievement. 



Contributions to Education 



a. Teaching Small Groups vs. Lecturing to Audiences. — -Through 

 its department of Elementary Education the Garden has made 

 several important contributions to current educational practice. 

 Schools had been sending classes "/o visit" museums, botanic 

 gardens, and zoological parks for several years before the 

 Brooklyn Botanic Garden was founded. The well established 

 practice was for the classes to go in groups of 500-1,500 pupils 

 at a time. This makes impressive figures of attendance, but 

 yields smaller educational returns than almost anything that 

 can be done with that number of elementary school pupils. The 

 Brooklyn Botanic Garden early developed the plan of en- 

 couraging small groups (classes of 40), and special work with 

 smaller groups of three or four, or only one or two. This reduced 

 attendance, and required more instructors, but it meant edu- 

 cation instead of merely information, teaching instead of lec- 

 turing ; they are not synonymous. 



h. Courses of Instruction vs. Unrelated Talks. — Prior to 1910 

 (when our work began) the almost universal practice was for 

 classes or larger groups to visit a museum or garden once, for 

 a lecture on a given topic. At the next visit the work was only 

 slightly, if at all, related to that of the preceding visit. There 

 was lack of continuity. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden lays 

 special emphasis on a series of related class exercises — in fact on 

 courses of instruction. Where isolated lectures are given they 



