16 
A writer in the Survey Graphic for December, 1933, has de- 
seribed how one family has met the depression. With a reduction 
in salary of 80 per cent. (from $100 to $20 a week), he writes, 
“No victim of the present conditions need be mentally depressed 
so long as he has access to books, and a garden to work in. = What 
repare the soil, 
pees 
is more satisfying, more soul inspiring, than to | 
1 the unfolding of leaf and bud.” 
— 
plant the seed, and wate 
sut one cannot become genuinely interested in gardening with- 
The inspection 
( It 
may, indeed, if he only follows the leads, take him to books and 
ideas concerning the history of gardening; and along that thread 
he may follow the fascinating story of civilization from its dawn 
out becoming interested in gardens and in plants. 
yf other gardens gives one suggestions to apply in his own. 
to the present. 
A more or less superficial and sketchy knowledge of plants no 
longer suffices; one feels the need of knowing a larger number of 
kinds—trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, and, in many cases, 
one finds himself wanting to know their horticultural or botanical 
as well as their common names, something of their relationships—~ 
the plant family to which they belong—the country of their origin, 
and the cultural conditions they require. If a botanic garden is 
accessible, it is easy to gratify these interests, and to deepen and 
broaden them. This, in fact, is one of the services which the 
srooklyn Botanic Garden renders to its community. And not 
only to those in its more immediate community, but to those within 
commuting distance. Thus we find ourselves a center of interest 
and pilgrimage and correspondence with an ever increasing num- 
ber from all of Long Island, from every borough of Greater New 
York, from Westchester County, and from suburban New Jersey 
—ineluding persons who, particularly in this period of economic 
depression, have turned instinctively to gardening and plant life 
and found themselves not disappointed. 
Non Acta SED AGENDA 
It wall, perhaps, seem to the readers of this report that its first 
paragraphs should record the fact that, even in a period of uni- 
versal economic disaster, some progress has been made. 
be easy to do this; but the future welfare of an institution is pro- 
—_ 
It would 
