19. 
3rooklyn and of a wider public that led the small group of men 
and women, within and without the membership of our Board of 
Trustees, to promote the plan and provide the private funds with- 
out which there would, in all probability, never have been a 
botanic garden in Brooklyn. Like the institutions referred to by 
President Eliot, botanic gardens never have been and never can 
be self-supporting if they are to serve the entire community. The 
need of private-funds support is a continuing one and tends to in- 
crease as opportunities and demands for public service multiply. 
It is a pity that the majority of the million and a half annual 
visitors to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden do not realize their per- 
sonal obligation to the private citizens who make it possible, and 
their debt of gratitude for the advantages which they here per- 

sonally enjoy. 
THE PLANTATIONS 
Perhaps the most striking change in the Plantations to be noted 
by a visitor who has not seen them for four or five years would be 
their general aspect of greater maturity. [ven those of us who 
see the Garden almost daily have remarked this year (1935) on 
the fact that the trees and shrubs are noticeably larger. The im- 
pression of newness is fading. Our early problem was to make 
the Garden appear to be adequately planted; our present problem 
is to find room for new trees and shrubs, and to decide what ones 
to remove to relieve overcrowding. 
Dutch Elm Disease.—In late June one of our rarer trees, a 
beautiful specimen of the Red Elm (Ulmus serotina), was found 
by the curator of plant pathology to be suffering from some dis- 
ease. Careful diagnosis left no doubt that the calamity we have 
been dreading had at last arrived; the infection was Graphiuwm 
ulmi, commonly known as “the Dutch Elm Disease,” first dis- 
covered in Holland in 1919. The infecting organism is a para- 
sitic fungus, and is carried from tree to tree chiefly by the smaller 
European elm-bark beetle (Scolytus multistriatus). The symp- 
toms of the disease are a yellowing, browning, and wilting of the 
leaves, and the browning of the young sapwood when twigs are 
cut with a knife. 
The first appearance of this disease in Brooklyn appears to have 
been on an elm tree on Ocean Parkway near Prospect Avenue, re- 
