i 
passing is an irreparable loss, not only to the Botanic Garden 
but to the entire City. 
THE GARDEN AND THE PUBLIC 
Attendance.—The appended report of the curator of public 
instruction records a total registered attendance for the year of 
1,691,835, the largest monthly attendance being 346,871 for May, 
and largest week-end attendances approximately 46,000 from 
Saturday noon to Sunday closing, May 1—2, and approximately 
48,000 the week-end following. The annual attendance was 
124,531 greater than that of 1936, and more than 678,500 greater 
than ten years ago. These figures mean not only added interest 
on the part of the public, but greater usefulness of the Garden, 
and increased wear and tear on the walks and lawns, and other- 
wise. They also mean the necessity for additional laborers, and 
guards, and make more urgent the need for an attendant at each 
entrance gate. 
Botanic Garden versus Park.—In previous reports I have called 
attention to the difference in the purposes to be served by a 
botanic garden and a park. A park is a place to be used pri- 
marily for recreation. In a park, for example, games may be 
—_ 
played, lunches may be eaten; people may recline on the lawns 
within certain limitations. All of these things, desirable in their 
proper place, would tend to defeat the primary purpose of the 
plantations of a botanic garden, which are intended to be es- 
sentia 
— 
ly an out-doors museum of plant life, and must be ad- 
ministered as such. The distinction is not generally understood, 
and that explains in part the difficulty in handling the multitudes 
who visit the Garden. So many of them do not realize that they 
are in a garden and not in a park, and, therefore, cannot do 
certain things that are rightly permissi 
— 
le in a park. 
The problem here involved is an old one. Almost exactly one 
hundred years ago (in 1835) Dr. Daubeny, director of the botanic 
garden of Oxford University, issued a code of ‘ Regulations of the 
Botanic Garden.”’ Admittance at the “principal entrance” was 
to be obtained only ‘‘on ringing the bell attached to the gateway.” 
(The writer has encountered such a regulation, still in force, at 
some of the botanic gardens in Europe.) The third regulation at 
Oxford read as follows: 
