174 



A little later an agreement was entered into with Columbia College 

 whereby the herbarium and botanical library of the College were 

 to be deposited at the Garden and the facilities of the Garden were 

 to be placed at the disposal of teachers and advanced students of 

 botany in the College. On June 17, 1896, Doctor Britton was 

 elected Director-in-Chief. He immediately resigned his Columbia 

 professorship and was made Professor Emeritus at the early age 

 of thirty-seven years. The site of the new Garden, consisting of 

 250 acres in the northern part of Bronx Park, was approved by 

 the Park Commissioners in July, 1895, and more than 140 acres 

 were added to this in 191 5, making the total area of the Garden 

 nearly 400 acres. By agreement with the City certain restrictions 

 were imposed upon making changes in the "Hemlock Grove" 

 bordering the Bronx River. The development and planting of the 

 remaining area occupied the attention of Director Britton and his 

 assistants for the next thirty-three years. The training in engineer- 

 ing received by him while a student in the School of Mines was 

 often put to practical use in laying out the grounds. But the 

 physical plant of The New York Botanical Garden was never 

 more than a means to an end with Director Britton. His first 

 thought was always for scientific research and the publication of 

 its results. In the autumn of 1900 he spent seven weeks abroad, 

 attending the International Congress of Botanists held in conjunc- 

 tion with the Paris Exposition, and visiting some of the larger 

 botanical gardens and herbaria of France, Switzerland, Germany, 

 and England, arranging exchanges of herbarium specimens, books, 

 seeds, and living plants and studying methods of culture and dis- 

 play of plants. One of the general conclusions drawn from this 

 European visit was the following: 



"As to the general features of the foreign institutions as com- 

 pared with our own, I would report that the botanical gardens and 

 museums of Berlin, London, and Paris are naturally far in advance 

 of us at present, in the number of species in cultivation and in the 

 size of their herbaria, libraries, and museum collections, and in 

 the development of the grounds. But as regards site, soil, natural 

 topography and buildings, none of them compare with Bronx Park 

 at all favorably." 



Botanical exploration of the West Indian region, which was to 

 become such an important feature of the Garden's activities during 



