944 PARKS 



incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia. By resolution of 

 Congress a small tract of land forming a part of the eastern extremity of 

 the Mall was turned over to the institute for the botanic garden, an area 

 forming part of the garden today (area, 1926, n.8 acres). The institute, 

 owing to financial difficulties and other causes, ceased to exist in 1837. The 

 garden was more or less neglected for about thirteen years (1850) when it 

 was finally taken over by the government. It is under the direct control 

 of the Library Committee of Congress. During the past decade several 

 attempts have been made to reestablish the garden in a more favorable 

 and more commodious location, a movement which will no doubt finally 

 prove successful. 



14. Botanical Garden of the University of California, Berkeley, California. 

 The garden was established in 1891 by the State of California through the 

 university. It occupied 2.5 acres in 1920. 



15. Botanic Garden of Smith College, established 1903. Garden occupies 

 an area of five acres. 



1 6. Johns Hopkins University Botanic Garden, established 1908. Area 

 occupied, three acres. 



17. Botanic Garden of the University of Pennsylvania, established 1894. 

 Area of garden, 4.5 acres. 



1 8. The Cornell University Arboretum, established 1908. Area of site, 

 twenty-five acres. 



THE HUMAN SERVICE VALUES OF BOTANICAL GARDENS 



Dr. Nathaniel Lord Britton, director of the New York Botanical 

 Garden, in an address at the Buffalo meeting of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, 1896, said, with reference to the origin and 

 human use values of botanical gardens: 



"The cultivation of plants within small areas for their healing qualities 

 by the monks of the Middle Ages appears to have been the beginning of 

 the modern botanical garden, although these mediaeval gardens doubtless 

 took their origin from others of greater antiquity. Botanical gardens were 

 thus primarily formed for purely utilitarian purposes, although the aesthetic 

 study of planting and of flowers must doubtless have appealed to their 

 owners and visitors. Their function as aids in scientific teaching and 

 research, the one which at present furnishes the dominating reason for 

 their existence, did not develop much, if at all, before the sixteenth century, 

 and prior to the middle of the seventeenth century a considerable number 

 existed in Europe in which this function was recognized to a greater or less 

 degree, of which those at Bologna, Montpellier, Leyden, Paris and Upsala 

 were perhaps the most noteworthy. The ornamental and decorative taste 

 for planting had meanwhile been slowly gaining ground, and during the 

 eighteenth century attained a high degree of development. Many persons 



