BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN RECORD 
VOL. XX! MAY, 1932 NO. 3 
ities LORY OF OUR BOULDIRS 
INTRODUCTION 
By © STUART GAGER 
“Tt rejoices me to think that, when a boy, I v shown an erratic boulder 
in Shrewsbury, and was told by a clever ala ee that till the world’s 
end no one would ever guess how it came there.”—Charles Darwin to J. D. 
Hooker, 1862. 
“We must assume an ice period.”—Louis Agassiz (1850). 
‘“ Sticks and stones have a story to tell.’—Hugh Miller (about 1854). 
“The track of a glacier is as unmistakable as that of a man or a bear. 
—John Newberry (1870). 
Discovery of the Boulders 
A visitor to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden will soon have his 
attention arrested by the considerable number of large rocks or 
boulders of various size and composition in all parts of the 
grounds. When the property was first assigned to the Board of 
Trustees, for developnient as a botanic garden, there were a num- 
ber of these boulders lying on the surface of the ground at various 
points, chiefly in the northern portion. 
When (in 1913-1914) the area between the Museum Building 
and Mt. Prospect reservoir was graded down, by some eight or 
ten feet, to the street level of Eastern Parkway, large quantities 
of these boulders were uncovered. Vhey varied in size from 
small cobble stones and coarse gravel to boulders much larger than 
a roll-top desk. 
Uses of the Boulders 
The uncovering of these boulders at once solved the problem of 
a rock garden, for, with the exception of a small outcrop of meta- 
morphic rocks in a narrow strip along [kast River, at the west end 
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