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new pests like the Japanese beetle and the Dutch Elm-disease 
are introduced; new features, such as the Medicinal and Culinary 
Herb Garden, the Wall Garden, the Rose Arc, and others demand 
additional work from gardeners and laborers. Since the World 
War the area under intensive cultivation has increased about 
forty per cent and yet, except for the fluctuating and otherwise 
inadequate help from WPA labor, the number of gardeners and 
laborers has remained substantially the same—actually one man 
less, as follows: 1918, three foremen, 21 gardeners and laborers; 
1937, three foremen, 20 gardeners and laborers. The number of 
WPA men has gradually been diminished at the very time when 
the need for them was increasing. 
Guards at the Gates.—It was specially unfortunate that the 
WPA guards at the gates have been discontinued. They were 
removed in the fall for the stated reason that such work is a 
“budgetary responsibility’’ (matter of routine maintenance), and 
it is the stated policy of the WPA not to assign workers for such 
positions. It is quite asimportant to have guards at our entrance 
gates as to have them at the entrance to a museum building. 
There was a steady decrease of petty vandalism in the Garden 
from the time the WPA guards were first assigned until their 
removal. Already there are signs of the return of the former 
conditions. A man is needed continuously at each of our five 
entrances, not only for the reason implied above, but also to 
give visitors the information continually asked for; to take charge 
of the sale of guide books, souvenir postcards, et cetera; and to 
provide for such emergencies as continually occur—lost articles, 
lost children, persons suddenly stricken ill, the exclusion of 
vendors and lunches, and numerous other items. He could also 
be responsible for the maintenance of an area within a definite 
radius of the gate. 
Local Flora Section.-As stated in preceding reports, this 
section is laid out on the basis of ecology (the relation of plants to 
their environment)—open woods, brook, wet meadow, sand area, 
glacial pool, bog (acid swamp), serpentine area, etc. For some 
time we have been unable to secure suitable weathered limestone 
rocks for the installation of ‘“‘lime-loving’’ (or lime-tolerant) 
plants. In Spetember, 1936, Mrs. Hollis Webster, of Lexington, 
Massachusetts, a member of the Herb Society of America, who 
