[Vol. 2 



30 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL OARDEN 



fortune, for at forty years of age Mr. Shaw retired from active 

 business to devote the remaining forty-nine years of his life 

 to travel, and later to the active and remarkably intimate crea- 

 tion and management of a garden — that garden of which, be- 

 cause of his intelligent planning and unprecedented fore- 



- 



thought and liberality, we are to-day celebrating the silver 

 anniversary. 



The advice and counsel of such men as Dr. George Engel- 

 mann, Sir William Hooker and Professor Asa Gray was freely 

 sought and as freely given. In this connection I should like 

 to read a letter from Sir Joseph Hooker, written June 17, 1888 : 



"The Camp, Sunnydale, England. 

 "My Dear Mr. Shaw :— 



"I have just received your most handsome present of Engelmann's 

 Botanical Works, edited by our dear late friend, Dr. Gray, and 1 do 

 thank you most heartily, no less for your kind gift than for the 

 effective service to botany that this most valuable contribution to the 

 science renders. It is indeed a noble tribute to a man whose labors 

 as a most conscientious and painstaking botanist have never been 

 surpassed, and I prize it for the sake of the man whom I knew so 

 well and esteemed so highly. I shall never forget my visit to him 

 and to you and the afternoon I spent in your garden and museum at 

 St. Louis, in company with Dr. and Mrs. Gray. 



"I have been most interested in all that Dr. Gray told me last year 

 about the noble botanical institution that you have founded and in 

 his hopes that it would be a center of diffusion of knowledge, the 

 influence of which would be felt far and wide. 



"I think that he was more proud of your consulting him in the 

 matter of its organization than of any of the many services which 

 he had rendered to American botany, and he certainly regarded his 

 labor with you as the most pleasant episode of his later years and by 

 far the most important. 



"Believe me, my dear sir, most faithfully and gratefully yours, 



Joseph D. Hooker. 



y> 



The country home of Mr. Shaw was built on these grounds 

 in 1849, and the breaking of the prairie for his garden is said 

 to have begun in 1857. There is no record of any formal 

 opening of the Garden to the public, however, the date 1858 

 on the entrance of the main gate probably being the year it 

 was erected rather than the time it was first opened to visitors. 

 The small " Museum and Library," as it is designated in the 



