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horizon and our grasp of the facts and meaning of the universe 
and of our own existence. A scientific institution, and in par- 
ticular a botanic garden, does not rise to the full measure of its 
obligations unless it gives to the generations that support it some- 
thing more than mere information and profitable recreation. It 
should, in connection with its educational work, pass on to the 
public something of the spirit of scientific research, and the im- 
mense reach and grasp of scientific problems, processes, and re- 
sults. In these aspects of its pursuit lies the great, but tardily 
recognized, value of science as an instrument of character-build- 
ing—of a liberal, as well as a technical, education. 
“ Among the values created by the human spirit,’ said General 
Smuts, in his presidential address before the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science last September, ‘ science ranks 
with art and religion. In its selfless pursuit of truth, in its vision 
of order and beauty, it partakes of the quality of both. More and 
more it is beginning to make a profound esthetic and religious 
appeal to thinking people. Indeed, it may fairly be said that 
science is perhaps the clearest revelation of God to our age. 
Science is at last coming into its own as one of the supreme goods 
of the human race.” 
A botanic garden, with its opportunities for appeal to esthetic 
as well as to more purely intellectual interests, is in a peculiar 
position of advantage to fulfill the enriching purposes of science 
so forcibly stated by General Smuts. How unfortunate it would 
be for an institution like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, whose 
program is conceived and carried out in the spirit of this broad 
grasp of the nature and possibilities of science, to be restricted 
and hampered in its work through any failure to realize that man 
does not live by bread alone, and that it is never so important, as 
during a period of economic (and therefore mental) depression, to 
nourish those agencies and institutions that minister to the cultural 
and intellectual needs of mankind. 
While it is not, perhaps, reasonable to expect as large financial 
support during this time of economic stress as normally, the 
director ventures to express the hope that the nature and extent 
of our work during 1931, as reported in the following pages, may 
prove sufhciently convincing to command confidence in its value 
