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5. Prizes for Botaucal Work of Merit—The Garden believes 
that a healthy stimulus to the study of plant life would be afforded 
by offering a number of prizes for botanical accomplishment of a 
high order of merit both in local high schools and at the Garden 
by school pupils. The prizes should not be of such a nature or 
value as to be sought after from mercenary motives, and might 
take the form of valuable books on botany or closely related sub- 
jects. An annual sum of $50 would be sufficient for this purpose. 
6. Public Scientific Lectures—Regular courses of free, popular, 
and more or less elementary lectures will be given at the Garden, 
by members of its staff, to young people and adults. In addition 
to these, and as a real intellectual stimulus, a series of more ad- 
vanced, semi-popular lectures by botanists of recognized ability, 
ought to be given at the Garden each year, free of charge. With 
a modest honorarium, two hundred dollars would enable the Gar- 
den to offer an annual course of from four to five such lectures. 
To establish a foundation for this purpose would be a service very 
much worth rendering the community, and one that would at once 
enhance the prestige of the Garden and the value of its public 
service. 
Besides the above items, there ought ultimately to be established 
at the Garden two or three research curatorships, each with an in- 
come of at least $3,000, and several fellowships, with an income of 
$500. The unsolved problems, the investigation of which would 
be made possible and encouraged by such foundations, are im- 
portant, not alone because their solution would help to advance 
natural knowledge, and enlarge our understanding of life in gen- 
eral and of plant life in particular, all of which is very much 
worth while, but because many of these problems, in their bear- 
ing upon right living, or their relation to large economic questions 
and commercial enterprises, intimately touch our daily lives. 
Agriculture is sorely in need of a better understanding of facts 
and principles to be derived by a study of plant breeding and 
genetics; the ground has hardly been scratched in the matter of 
improving medicinal plants and growing them as a commercial 
crop; by a better understanding of the causes of plant diseases and 
their treatment, thousands of dollars might be saved every year 
on each of several agricultural crops. 
