15 
and dignified structures at their entrances; so do many foreign 
botanic gardens; so should the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. 
Free Admission.—In response to letters soliciting contributions 
for the work of the Garden we received in 1937 a number of 
replies suggesting that admission fees should be charged, at 
least on certain days if not daily. There is much to be said in 
favor of such a plan. Some of the semi-public museums of the 
City and the Zoological Park have two pay days a week. The 
plan would exclude practically all persons who wish merely to 
visit a park, and many who would enter either a park or a garden 
for asocial or otherwise improper purposes. It would be ap- 
preciated by many. But it would greatly reduce the attendance, 
and it is unlikely that any ‘‘nominal’’ admission fee would do 
more than yield the amount required to collect it and do the 
— 
necessary accounting. However, our ‘‘Agreement”’ with the 
City requires us to keep the Garden open to the public free 
every day in the year, and so no fee could be charged unless the 
“Agreement”? were amended to provide for it. 
The People and the Public—The English poet, Wordsworth, 
once wrote to Sir George Beaumont that ‘‘No poem of mine will 
ever be popular... . The People would love the Poem of 
Peter Bell, but the Public (a very different thing) will never love 
it.”’ The distinction is subtle but very real. On any day of 
large attendance one may see ‘‘the People’’ enjoying the Garden 
in a manner highly gratifying to us, while at the same time 
“the Public” is here and there misusing it. Our dual and 
difficult problem is to protect the Garden from “the Public 
so that it may be enjoyed by “the People” in harmony with the 
aims for which it was established. 
THE PLANTATIONS 
oe ’ 
The plantations—the ‘Gardens within a Garden’’—become 
more beautiful each year and draw an ever-increasing number of 
visitors. Since they have not yet become merely a maintenance 
project, but are still in process of development, they also require 
more attention each year. The trees and shrubs increase in size; 
the herbaceous plantings need replenishing and revising; old 
labels need renewing as well as new ones to be made; insect and 
fungus pests require more and more attention, especially when 
