144 
ters in the Brooklyn Museum building, investigations were well 
under way on the Local Flora, Plant Physiology, and Plant Pa- 
thology, and by the year 1921 there had been published twenty-five 
numbers of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Contributions embody- 
ing some of the results of these studies, and also Volume I of 
Brooklyn Botanic Garden Memoirs, 500 pages, comprising thirty- 
three research papers presented by members of the Garden Staff 
and visiting botanists at the dedication of the Laboratory Build- 
ing in 1917. 
Botanical research was, therefore, the first work initiated by 
the Garden, practically contemporaneous with the preliminary ad- 
ministrative activities. 
From the beginning, it was planned to emphasize the experi- 
mental aspects of botany, with due attention also to studies of the 
vegetation within a radius of 100 miles of Brooklyn (the Local 
Flora area as defined some years previously by the Torrey Bo- 
tanical Club.) 
This decision was made not only because generous provision 
already existed in a sister institution for the advancement of Sys- 
tematic Botany, but also because of the great theoretical and prac- 
tical importance of the problems of experimental botany. More- 
over, although the institutions and individuals then engaged in ex- 
perimental studies were producing results of a high order of 
merit, the provision for this work was meagre, out of all propor- 
tion to its great importance. 
The United States Department of Agriculture, through its 
Bureau of Plant Industry and other Bureaus, and the State Agri- 
cultural Experiment Stations were then, as now, attacking with 
vigor and ability the innumerable problems of applied botany, 
with special reference to agriculture; but the effectiveness of such 
research is always governed by the state of our knowledge of 
fundamental principles and facts that may be applied in practice. 
It is, of course, a truism that we can have no applied science un- 
less we first have something to apply. For this we are dependent 
upon research in so-called “ pure” science. It was for the pur- 
pose of helping to meet this need that the research program of the 
Brooklyn Botanic Garden was organized. 
Largely, though not exclusively, confined to pure science, this 
