HERBARIUM OF 
THOMAS J. DELENDICK 
TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT 
OF THE 
BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
1930 * 
REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 
To THE BoTANIC GARDEN GOVERNING COMMITTEE 
I have the honor to present herewith 
1 the twentieth annual report 
of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, covering the year 1930. 
Looking Backward 
Edward Bellamy looked backward by turning his back on the 
future and looking over his shoulder. This was a literary device 
for centering attention on things that ought to occur and were 
likely to occur. That is the only excuse for looking backward. 
Ten years ago we made our first backward glance and thereby 
found that the Botanic Garden had made some progress; but the 
new shibboleth, relativity, showed us that the place where we stood 
was much further from the goal than from the starting point. 
Such an experience is always a great stimulus while hope re- 
mains, and now, at the end of the second decade of the Botanic 
Garden, it may not be uninteresting, nor unprofitable to look back- 
ward once more, not to find justification for drawing the famous 
conclusion of Jack Horner, but to get a full measure of the in- 
centive that comes from realizing how far we still are from the 
ideal of accomplishment. Perhaps it will be best to note first 
certain items of material well-being that may be stated statistically. 
Not that these things have been ends in themselves, or ever should 
be. They are only indexes of progress and means to an end—the 
fulfillment of the objects for which the Garden was established, 
namely, the advancement of botanical science and education 
Without progress in material well-being, we should be seriously 
1 BRooKLYN Botanic GArpEN Recorp, Vol. XX, No. 2, March, 1931. 
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