(11) 
Laboratories has continued experimental work in plant 
breeding, which is described in his report hereto appended. 
19. Conservatory Range I 
The collections in this great greenhouse have been con- 
served and considerable additions have been made to them, 
the fine series of palms presented by Mrs. Collis P. Hunt- 
ington and Mrs. Finley J. Shepard being the most note- 
worthy. The houses are densely crowded at the present 
time, owing to the transferral, made necessary by the coal 
situation, of the collections from conservatory range 2 in 
the early part of 1918, and this crowding of plants is not 
conducive to the best cultivation or the most effective 
exhibition. A considerable rearrangement of the collec- 
tions has also been found necessary, so that the account of 
the contents of the different houses as published in our 
last guide-book is now out of date in a number of details. 
Very extensive repairs to the roofs of these greenhouses 
were found necessary during the year, requiring a large 
expenditure of money for re-glazing and re-framing, and 
the heating system required a large amount of new steam 
pipe; all these repairs were accomplished by our own 
mechanics and steam engineers. 
20. Conservatory Range 2 
This range of greenhouses has been empty during the 
entire year, as a consequence of the coal situation. Oppor- 
tunity has been taken to completely repaint both the 
interior and exterior and to make light necessary repairs 
to the frame. Construction of the two additional green- 
houses of this range, made possible by the gifts of $50,000 
each by Messrs. Daniel Guggenheim and Murry Guggen- 
heim, elsewhere described in this report, will presumably 
be completed in the spring, and it is proposed, during the 
summer, to put this range in operation again and to replace 
within it the collections moved to conservatory range 1; 
many additional plants for this collection may be brought 
