29 
Popular and semi-popular articles and reviews by members of 
the Garden personnel have been published during the year to the 
number of 77, in addition to 17 technical publications. All of these 
are listed in Appendix 2 (p. 120). Thirty-eight news releases 
have been prepared for the press. 
RESEARCH 
One of the popular fallacies about scientific research is the im- 
pression that its results benefit only a small portion of the public. 
To hold that conception is to lose sight of the fact that the entire 
body of human knowledge has resulted from research—from 
thoughtful, unprejudiced, persistent inquiry concerning the world 
about us. It is a truism to remark that without research our 
entire program of public education would be impossible. And we 
should not depend merely on knowledge that became available 
centuries or decades ago and which has become general public 
information. If our teaching is to be reliable and vital we must 
take account of the results of current research as they become 
known. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is the daily beneficiary of 
research done elsewhere; it is highly fitting that we should also 
be making contributions to our knowledge of plant life as a service, 
not to the few, but to the general public. 
Reports of progress on research under way during the year are 
given on pages 51 to 69. The subjects include the fundamental 
problem of disease resistance in plants and the Japanese Iris proj- 
ect (Dr. Reed and collaborators); the breeding of a chestnut 
tree resistant or immune to the disease that has destroyed nearly 
all the American chestnuts (Dr. Graves and assistants) ; systematic 
1e local flora (Dr. Svenson and assistants) ; 
—_— 
botany and studies of t 
flower structure and ontogeny, and its bearing on the phylogeny 
and classification of the Dicotyledons (Dr. Gundersen) ; experi- 
mental genetics of the Boston Fern—Nephrolepis (Dr. Benedict) ; 
economic plants (Dr. Cheney). 
3otanical research by our own staff, as we have often stated 
before, is important for the proper administration of our collec- 
tions and the enrichment of our educational work; it is of the 
very essence of the advancement of botanical science which is one 
of the purposes for which this botanic garden was established, as 
