972 PARKS 



Assistant curator of elementary instruction. Assistant secretary. 



Curator of public instruction. Business office assistant. 



Instructors (2). Registrar and custodian. 



Curatorial assistants (5). Membership secretary. 



Librarian. Secretary to the director. 



Assistant librarian. Stenographers (2"). 



Resident investigator. Foremen gardeners. 



Research assistants (2). Gardeners. 



Consulting landscape architect. Foreman of laborers. 



Photographer. Laborers. 

 Secretary and accountant. 



Appointments to all positions are made by the director of the garden 

 with the approval of the Botanic Garden Governing Committee of the 

 Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. In relation to the executive organ- 

 ization the governing authority, whether of a private-public corporation or 

 a municipal park department, has the important direct duty of selecting 

 a director, defining his duties and laying down general plans and policies 

 respecting types of functional services. It is hardly necessary to say that 

 the success of any botanical garden depends almost wholly upon the scien- 

 tific qualifications and the administrative ability and social vision of the 

 person selected as director. When a director has been selected he should 

 be given a free hand to organize and develop the work, select his staff 

 (subject to the approval of his governing authority), lay down rules for their 

 guidance and govern their work. 



Mr. Henry Shaw (Missouri Botanical Garden) included an interesting 

 provision in his will to the effect that there shall always be a director of 

 the garden, appointed and subject to removal by the board of trustees, by 

 whom his duties are from time to time to be prescribed, but who, "when 

 within the sphere of his duties thus prescribed and while he shall faithfully 

 perform those duties thus prescribed . . . shall not be subject to the inter- 

 ference, management or control of said board." ("The Missouri Botanical 

 Garden," William Trelease,LL.D. Reprint from the Popular Science Monthly, 

 January 1903.) While the construction of this provision cannot be taken 

 so literally as to deprive the governing authority of the actual control of 

 the institution, Mr. Shaw's idea is so wise from an executive viewpoint, 

 that it should not only be adopted as a cardinal principle by all governing 

 authorities of botanical gardens but also by all governing authorities of 

 park systems. 



It has already been noted that the selection of the director in chief 

 of the New York Botanical Garden is not made by the board of managers 

 of the corporation but by the scientific directors, the presumption being 

 that the membership of this directorate are better qualified to select a 

 suitable director than those who were not so closely in touch with the scien- 



