1915] 



ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION BANQUET 21 



Garden of Eden. It is the only garden I ever heard of from 



which people were excluded because they had just begun to 



learn something, and it seems to be exceedingly cruel that they 



should have been turned out into a cold world merely because 

 they knew something. 



But it is a long step from the Garden of Eden, and history 

 is a little more accurate in recent times than it was then. The 

 traditional botanical garden, the one which has existed for 

 centuries in Europe and to a less extent in this country, was a 

 place where the seeds of a great many plants were sown ; some 

 came up and some did not, but they were all labelled. Now 

 many plants are annual but labels are perennial and the un- 

 fortunate result in many of the older gardens was that there 

 was a luxuriance of labels and a comparative poverty of plants 

 corresponding to the labels. 



The ideal garden is nature. We can never equal nature in 

 anything like proximate perfection. Go up in the mountains 

 or go out into the woods. You see nature where it has existed 

 for ages, the result of centuries of work. What we see is not 

 what has been planted a few years before. It is the result of 

 the conflict of ages going on between natural forces, and what 

 we see is the final result, such as can not be obtained by man. 

 We find plants which grow where they naturally grow ; we see 

 <^ moss where moss should grow ; we see trees where trees should 



H~" be. In a botanical garden of the present day, such as the Mis- 



souri Botanical Garden, we should imitate nature as far as is 

 possible in a limited space and offer to the general public and 

 the special students of botany an epitome of the vegetation of 



the world. 



Those of our botanists who visited the Garden yesterday 

 and to-day saw a superb display of cosmos. I don't know that 

 St. Louis people fully appreciate what a fine exhibition of 

 flowering plants we have seen here, but the cosmos are per- 

 fectly magnificent and you have reason to be proud of them. 

 I hope your spring flowers are equally splendid, and there is no 

 reason why in the summer you can't have groups of equally 

 fine character. The old-fashioned botanical gardens had no 

 beauty whatever. They were simply artificial and repulsive, 



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