- JULY 21, 1899. ] 
So large a number of plants are continu- 
ously in cultivation at Kew that plant 
growers from all over the United Kingdom 
visit Kew for purposes of comparison of 
plants and methods, so that the Kew au- 
thorities are in touch with every plant 
grower of importance throughout the 
Queen’s dominions. 
2. A large and properly named collection 
of growing plants cannot fail to exert a posi- 
tive educational influence on the general 
public. There is an amazing ignorance 
among all classes regarding the names and 
relations of trees and shrubs. We know 
the common animals, even those we see 
only rarely, but we pass under beautiful 
trees day after day, many of us, all our lives 
without recognizing either their names or 
relations, or noting their marked and posi- 
tive characters ; we know the common birds 
even, better than the trees in which they 
build their nests. A large and diversified 
named collection of trees and shrubs is, 
therefore, an educational influence of no 
small value. And this is more especially 
true when the plants are selected not merely 
because they present a mass of brilliant 
color, nor when they are selected for their 
mere novelty, as in the case of many pri- 
vate collections of note, but when, as at 
Kew, they are selected from all parts of the 
world to represent the distinctive vegetation 
of different regions, and from the entire 
range of the vegetable kingdom, and are ar- 
ranged so as to show geographic (ecologic) 
and biologie relationships, and most espe- 
cially when they are supplemented by mu- 
seums illustrating the economic value of 
plants and their relation to man and his 
welfare. As we have said before, Kew is 
particularly hampered from her lack of suit- 
able buildings for her museums. The three 
buildings occupied for this purpose were 
none of them originally intended for any 
such use. One was the orangery erected 
for the Princess Augusta in 1761, and bear- 
SCIENCE. 71 
ing her monogram, and the other two were 
residence houses not in the least adapted to 
their present use as museums. This has 
necessitated the combination of the sys- 
tematic (or more properly taxonomic) and 
the economic series, and has prevented as 
consecutive and logical an arrangement as 
would best serve educational ends. The 
New York Botanical Garden is fortunate in 
being able to outline its plans untrammeled 
by existing conditions other than those im- 
posed by nature, and in arranging liberally 
for its museum under a single roof in a fire- 
proof building, where its economic and tax- 
onomic series of collections can be dis- 
played, without crowding, on separate 
floors of the building. 
3. The interrelations of Kew with the 
colonial gardens so widely scattered in both 
hemispheres and in every zone make pos- 
sible the broad study of suitable economic 
plants for cultivation in a particular colony, 
and, reciprocally, the colonial stations are 
helpful in enabling the mother garden to 
know the conditions that exist which will 
permit the development of certain agricul- 
tural industries within their territory. In 
selecting plants of economic importance for 
new colonies or in aiding in the renewal of 
old colonies that have been ruined by ne- 
glect; in distinguishing between the varie- 
ties of cultivated plants more or less valu- 
able for their useful products; in assisting 
to prevent the extermination of useful 
plants that are endangered in their native 
countries ; in assisting to make more pro- 
ductive the enormous colonial development, 
and in preventing the destruction of forests 
that if continued would turn fertile prov- 
inces into desert places—in all these im- 
portant factors of English civilization the 
Kew Gardens serve an important and use- 
ful purpose in advice and direction. The 
development of the cotton and cinchona 
culture in India, the agricultural develop- 
ment of Ceylon and the extension of the 
