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The docent has a vast deal of information at his command— 
botanical, horticultural, and economic. He points out the care- 
ful mulching of the young conifers with leaf-mould, to conserve 
moisture and furnish plant food, this leaf-mould being obtained 
from leaves raked from lawns every year and rotted in large 
iles in an out-of-the-way place along the Bronx River. He 
tells how, under the microscope, the wood of coniferous trees 
can readily be told from that of hardwoods, and by expert knowl- 
edge the different coniferous woods distinguished from each other. 
He touched on the manifold useful products of these trees, other 
than lumber, such as turpentines, oils, pitch and balsam, tan- 
bark from the hemlock spruces, and edible seeds from many of 
the pines; on the conservation of coniferous forests, and refore- 
station of denuded countries; on the relative rapidity of growth; 
and on the kinds best adapted for decorative planting. 
The present arrangements are for the docent to leave the front 
door of the museum building every week-day afternoon at three 
o'clock, and his routes are as follows: Mondays, herbaceous 
Wednesdays, fruticetum and north meadows, including the ea. 
lection of willows; Thursdays, deciduous arboretum, nurseries, 
propagating houses, and public conservatories no. 2; Fridays, 
public conservatories no. I and flower gardens; Saturdays, 
museums, library, herbarium and a public lecture at four o’clock 
for those who care to attend it—New York Evening Post. 
THE BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN. 
On the twenty-eighth of December, 1909, Mayor McClellan, 
on behalf of New York City, and the president and the treasurer 
of the board of trustees of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and 
Sciences, on behalf of the institute, signed an agreement for the 
establishment of a botanic garden and arboretum in the borough 
of Brooklyn. For this purpose there has been reserved a tract 
of land, comprising between thirty-five and forty acres, lying 
