64 



Biology in America 



the garden passed into tlic hands of a board of trustees to be 

 administered as a public garden and a research school of 

 botany. 



On this foundation has risen the Missouri Botanical Garden 

 of the present, with its splendid conservatories and her- 

 barium; its library containing among thousands of modern 

 botanical works some of the rarest of those dealing with the 

 earliest studies on the exploration of plant and animal life 

 in America ; and its research laboratory where the faculty 

 and graduate students of botany in the university may 



A Glimpse of the New York Botanical Garden 

 Courtesy 0/ the Garden. 



prosecute their studies. The popular conception of a 

 botanical garden as that of a museum of living plants for 

 display purposes is admirably realized in the arboretum and 

 conservatories of the garden, while the less popular, but far 

 more important function of research is equally well per- 

 formed in its well equipped laboratories. The field of 

 activity covered by the garden is limited only by the bounds 

 of botanical knowledge. No problem is too abstruse or too 

 practical for its attention. In all of its educational features, 

 in display as well as in research, the Garden occupies one of 

 the most important places in American botany. 



