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~I 
Of the modest endowment of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 
only $23,917 has been specially designated for the Library, 
yielding an income in 1934 of only $1,250.30. This amount has 
been supplemented by $2,056.76 from other sources; but the 
small total amount available for publications in 1934 ($2,748.21) 
has made it necessary to forego the purchase of many essential 
publications, has made it impossible to take advantage of many 
real bargains in old and rare classics (important for us), and has 
provided for only a very small percentage of the binding that 
accumulates from year to year. 
Notwithstanding this, the library has increased by 619 volumes, 
644 pamphlets, and 5,366 parts of publications, obtained by gift, 
exchange, and publication, as well as by purchase, as reported on 
page 109. The library is now receiving 1,000 current periodicals, 
lacking three. 
The number of users (4,200) was greater than for any previous 
year since the Garden was established. Compared to public 
library data these figures are, of course, not impressive, but it 
must be kept in mind that ours is a highly specialized library, 
restricted to reference. Its importance is determined by the 
character and quality of its service and not by quantitative re- 
sults. Students and investigators are now continually finding 
in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Library items they had searched 
for in vain in other accessible collections. 
ALS of Robert Brown.—The gift of an ‘‘autograph letter 
signed’’ of Robert Brown is noted in the report on the library 
(p. 103) and deserves special mention here. As every botanist 
knows, Robert Brown, curator of the botanical library and her- 
barium of the British Museum, was one of the outstanding bota- 
nists of all time. During his lifetime (1773-1858) he was desig- 
nated by Humboldt as ‘“‘facile botanicorum princeps, Britanniae 
gloria et ornamentum.’’ In addition to his contributions to sys- 
tematic botany he was, as all botanists know, the first to discover 
and describe the nucleus as an organ of the cell. This was almost 
exactly one hundred years ago (in 1833). 
“T know no botanical writings at all comparable to those [of 
Robert Brown] on morphology, taxonomy and classification, for 
sagacity, profundity, range of knowledge, scrupulous accuracy 
