25 
research organizations and foundations, there is still very inade- 
quate financial provision for botanical research. 
The year’s activity in the modest program of research at the 
srooklyn Botanic Garden is briefly recorded on pages 54-75. As 
is commonly the case in research, the work already accomplished 
has not only extended our knowledge, but has uncovered impor- 
tant new problems to be solved. 
This work is still on the insecure financial basis of annual con- 
tributions of funds. In a previous report (for 1930) we com- 
mented on the expressed opinion of a well-known philanthropist 
to the effect that each generation should be expected to provide 
the funds for the educational and scientific work of its own day. 
i great national government (the United States) 
3ut when we see < 
lars of appropriations for scientific 
cancelling ten millions of dol 
research, thus throwing hundreds of efficient scientific men out of 
employment, with the consequent lying idle of expensive plant 
and equipment and the abandonment of important projects, and, at 
the same time, appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars for 
projects undertaken primarily to give employment; and when 
we think what the result would be 1f our endowed institutions for 
research in medicine, chemistry, physics, biology, and other 
branches of science were vow dependent on the contributions of 
their generous, but more or less impoverished, contemporaries, we 
realize, as we could hardly have done four years ago, how essential 
it is for the indispensable work of research and education to be 
—t 
made secure by permanent endowment funds. 
It was the hope and the expressed anticipation of Mr. Alfred 
T. White, when he provided for the first research curatorship at 
the Botanic Garden for a limited term of years, that the work 
would ultimately be permanently provided for by an endowment 
by one of the existing foundations. As yet, however, this hope 
has not been fulfilled. 
Registered Investigators are listed on page 63, together with 
Part of these investigators are regis- 
statements of their problems. 
lidates for an advanced degree, 
tered in various universities as canc 
while others have attained the doctorate or the master’s degree. 
