June 29, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



649 



preceding February the Board of Estimate 

 and Apportionment of the city of New 

 York was requested to issue corporate 

 stock of the city for the erection of the 

 building, and the plans and specifications 

 for the first section were advertised for 

 public letting during October and Novem- 

 ber, 1911. 



On January 18 the contract was awarded 

 to Cockerill & Little Co., the lowest bidders. 

 The building was to be completed in 150 

 working days from April 1, 1912. Exca- 

 vation began on April 8, but owing to 

 numerous exasperating delays the Garden 

 staff was not able to occupy the first section 

 of the building until September 24, 1913, 

 approximately one year after the date 

 specified for the completion of the con- 

 tract. 



The work of the Garden, administered 

 for over three years from a temporary office 

 in the Brooklyn Museum, had reached such 

 proportions that the small first section was 

 quite outgrown before it was occupied. 

 The small plant houses became greatly over- 

 crowded, both with plants and with classes ; 

 our one lecture room and class-room made 

 it possible for us to respond to only a frac- 

 tion of the demands made upon us by the 

 schools and the general public ; part of our 

 library and thousands of specimens of our 

 herbarium were packed away in storage, 

 inaccessable for daily use; of laboratory 

 accommodations we had almost none; 

 further growth was impossible, stagnation 

 was out of the question, for the Botanic 

 Garden was a living institution, young and 

 vigorous. 



The state of the city's finances, resulting 

 from the enormous cost of necessary public 

 improvements, made it necessary for the 

 most efficient board of estimate and appor- 

 tionment the city has ever had to adminis- 

 ter the public funds with the strictest econ- 

 omy, making appropriations of corporate 

 stock only for necessary or very urgent 



purposes. This was the situation confront- 

 ing our garden in May, 1915, when the 

 chairman of our governing committee, real- 

 izing the urgency of our need, and believ- 

 ing firmly in the value of our work to this 

 city, as well as to education and science in 

 general, secured private funds to the 

 amount of $100,000 on the condition that 

 the city appropriate corporate stock in the 

 same amount for the completion of our 

 buildings, and other permanent improve- 

 ments of the Garden. The terms of the gift 

 were accepted by the city administration, 

 the corner-stone was laid just one year ago 

 to-morrow (April 20, 1916), and to-night 

 we dedicate the building. 



One can not help but recall at this time 

 how very recent is the development of sci- 

 entific laboratories. By whatever way you 

 come to this building this evening you were 

 dependent for your transportation upon an 

 electro-magnet; electro-magnetism was dis- 

 covered by Faraday in 1831, and the lab- 

 oratory in which he worked was the only 

 research laboratory then in existence. The 

 epoch-making discoveries of the great 

 French physiologist, Claude Bernard 

 (about 1870), were made in the damp, un- 

 sanitary cellars of the College de France. 

 It was indeed impossible, says M. Vallery- 

 Radot, to dignify these cellars by the name 

 of laboratories; Bernard himself called 

 them "scientists' graves" — a prophetic 

 name, for it was Pasteur's opinion that the 

 disease which caused the death of Bernard 

 was induced by the unhealthful conditions 

 in which he was obliged to work. The lab- 

 oratory of the Sorbonne was equally bad, 

 dark and damp, and several feet below the 

 level of the street. As late as 1871- there 



- The first botanical laboratory in the United 

 States for undergraduate instruction was intro- 

 duced at Iowa Agricultural College (Ames) by the 

 late Professor C. E. Bessey, in 1873. The labora- 

 tory method for advanced students is said to have 

 been introduced the year previous at Harvard, but 

 this was unknown to Bessey. 



