(329) 
conservatories, and that valuable plants had disappeared.* 
I judge that these defects were soon remedied, for the trustees 
reported to the regents in 1812, that the garden was then 
‘*in good condition,” and in 1814, that ‘*the grounds were 
cultivated with care and continue in the same state of preser- 
vation as before.” ‘* We have a valuable botanical garden,” 
they say, ‘‘ highly useful and conducive to the acquisition of 
knowledge in Materia Medica” (p. 10). In 1815 there were 
similar complaints of decadence. 
After several years of trial, however, in consequence of 
the distance of the garden from the College, its need of con- 
stant supervision and frequent repair, and the expense, the 
difficulty of finding a responsible and faithful tenant, the lack 
of state support and the subordinate importance of the garden 
in medical study, made the grant of the garden grounds to 
Columbia College in 1814, a welcome relief to the trustees 
of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, though Dr. 
Hosack was loath to part with it. Three times afterwards, 
as stated below, he endeavored, without success, to renew 
his connection with the garden by obtaining a lease of it to 
societies with which he was associated; and in 1816 he peti- 
tioned the legislature, also without success, to bestow the 
garden upon the College of Physicians and Surgeons, giving 
to Columbia instead, its money value§ (post, pp. 334, 335). 
When the garden was conveyed to the state, Dr. Hosack 
hoped it would remain a permanent institution under the state’s 
support, as the Jardin des Plantes is maintained in Paris. || 
In that hope he had projected an enterprise, which, if carried 
out, would have been a permanent contribution to botanical 
science, but which, almost a century later, still remains un- 
accomplished. In his preface to the Elgin Catalogue (1811) 
he says: 
* Dalton’s Hist. Col. Phys. and = 38. 1888. Trustees’ Min. Col. Phys. 
f Act of Ap. 13, 1814, Ch. 120 
Prof. Lee in Hist. Columbia Un., = 1904. 
é Trustees’ Min. Col. Phys. and S., 2: 73; Assembly Journal, 1816: 384. 
|| ‘‘But it was suffered to go to ruin.” Gross’ Amer. Med. Biog., 316. 
