96 
for the loan of a volume, in order to photostat an article. (Their 
engineer delayed his departure for Mexico until he received the 
photostat.) The librarian of a large advertising agency of the 
metropolitan district of New York telephoned for the loan of 
a number of agricultural titles. 
Fic. 13. Artists painting Iris along the Brook, Brooklyn Botanic 
Garden. May 25. (50957. 
A member of the Public Service Commission of Louisiana wrote 
asking for all the information we could give him on the Ramie 
plant. We sent him a bibliography of about thirty citations, a copy 
of the article in Bailey’s Cyclopedia of Agriculture, and he was also 
réterred: fo the UW. S:. Department of Acriculture, and: the. U.S: 
Department of Commerce, for any later bulletins these depart- 
ments might be preparing for publication. 
It is almost too bizarre to conjure up the thought of a vaude- 
ville artist asking the help of a Botanic Garden library for his 
professional “trick.” Yet such was actually the case. Contrast 
this with the request of a pre-medical student at Columbia Uni- 
versity asking for all the information we could give him concern- 
ing Vesalius; or a professor of a university is given a list of 
