168 JOURNAL OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM [VOL. HI 



classes of University undergraduates. A few special students, often in 

 recent years from China and Japan, are received by Professor J. G. Jack 

 who for many years now has given field lessons during the spring and 

 autumn months among the collections of trees. In the answers to the 

 letters which come to the Arboretum, as to all museums, asking for infor- 

 mation, help and instruction are freely given. 



The Arnold Arboretum is not a School of Forestry or of Landscape 

 Gardening. It is a station for the study of trees as individuals in their 

 scientific relations, economic properties and cultural requirements and 

 possibilities. On the information gathered in museums like the Arnold 

 Arboretum successful silviculture and landscape gardening are dependent, 

 for silviculture is the cultivation on a large scale of the trees most valuable 

 in a particular locality, and landscape gardening demands a knowledge 

 of the individual plants which can be naturally associated for the decoration 

 of parks and gardens. 



No account of the Arnold Arboretum is complete without mention of 

 two remarkable men who have died in its services. 



CHARLES EDWARD FAXON, one of three brothers who devoted the best 

 part of their lives to the study of Natural History, was born in 1846 in 

 Jamaica Plain where he died in 1918. As a boy he had begun to study the 

 New England flora and to show his ability to draw by his copies in color of 

 Audubon's pictures of birds. Before 1870 he had made most of the colored 

 drawings to illustrate Eaton's "Ferns of North America"; and from 1879 

 to 1884 he was instructor in botany at the Bussey Institution. In 1882 

 when the plan was made to prepare at the Arboretum an illustrated work 

 on the trees of North America Faxon was invited to make the drawings for 

 it. At this time he took charge of the herbarium and library which he 

 continued to manage until his death. His knowledge of botany, especially 

 of the flora of eastern North America, his love of books and his remarkable 

 faculty for learning foreign languages were of great value in the organiza- 

 tion and care of these departments. During twenty-one years Faxon was 

 engaged on the seven hundred and forty-four drawings which illustrate the 

 " Silva of North America," and during his twenty-six years of service for 

 the Arboretum nineteen hundred and twenty-four of his drawings of plants 

 were published. To his work he brought enthusiasm, industry, good taste, 

 a thorough understanding and love of his subjects, an unusually skilful 

 pencil, and skill in microscopic analysis. No other American botanical 

 artist has had his experience and industry, and no one has contributed 

 more to the reputation of the Arboretum and the value of its publications. 



JACKSON T. DAWSON was the first superintendent of the Arboretum and 

 continued to fill this position and that of propagator until his death in the 

 summer of 1916. Born in the East Riding of Yorkshire in 1841 Dawson 

 was brought when a child to this country by his mother and when eight 

 years old was started in gardening in an uncle's nursery in Andover, Massa- 

 chusetts. He served for three years in a Massachusetts regiment during 



