169 
Tue THIRTIETH ANNUAL SPRING INSPECTION 
Tuespay, May 9, 1944 
The program was planned in honor of Dr. C. Stuart Gager, 
Director, July 1, 1910-August 9, 1943. It included an assembly 
in the Auditorium, a tour of inspection of the grounds to view 
interesting features of the Garden, and an exhibit, displayed in the 
rotunda, corridors, and exhibit room, of enlarged photographs of 
the Garden illustrating its development. 
Miss Hilda Loines, Chairman of the Governing Committee, pre- 
sided at the meeting in the Auditorium, and introduced Mr. John 
C. Wister as follows: 
“Tn welcoming you this afternoon it seems strange not to have 
with us Dr. Gager, who was always the centre of these occasions, 
and it is still stranger to realize that before Dr. Gager came to 
Brooklyn there was no Brooklyn Botanic Garden here. It was he 
who developed an unpromising area consisting chiefly of waste- 
land into this place of beauty which we are all enjoying today. 
But in the development of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Dr. 
Gager’s service to science and education was no less notable, and 
I should like to give you an estimate of his work in this field by the 
noted Russian botanist, Dr. N. W. Timofeeff-Ressovsky, who 
came to this country for the Genetics Congress of 1932. After 
a visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, he wrote as follows : 
“*The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a very young one; and it is 
astonishing to realize in how short a time Dr. Gager has succeeded 
ary 
in organizing such a rich and well-planned scientific and public 
institution. In many respects the best European botanical gar- 
dens are far behind the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, although they 
are much older, and have a long scientific and organizational tradi- 
tion and connections with celebrated old universities and scientific 
institutions. 
““The second point concerns the research work that Dr. Gager 
and Dr. Reed have organized at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. 
In most cases research is the weakest aspect of botanical gardens. 
In cases where some connection with science exists, it is usually 
dom does one see 
— 
only a connection with systematics. Very se 
