Mat 6, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



683 



siently, are charged with conveying special 

 information— success in this, as in the 

 choice of material, lying between too little 

 to convey the desired lesson and too much 

 to be examined or understood. 



The research use of a garden, as of a 

 museum, introduces considerations quite 

 different from those necessarily encoun- 

 tered in providing for its use as a means 

 of giving pleasure or conveying informa- 

 tion, not the least of these being that every 

 dollar spent for these purposes may mean 

 a dollar less for such research. Just as 

 many museums are compelled to limit their 

 activity to the educational display of their 

 treasures, many gardens find no means for 

 doing more than to present object lessons 

 in the vegetable kingdom either to persons 

 who visit them in its quest or by providing 

 demonstration material for the class room. 

 Adequately planned and economically ad- 

 ministered to this end, a garden is indis- 

 pensable wherever botany is taught as a 

 biological science; and few European uni- 

 versities have failed to include it in the 

 equipment of a botanical department. If 

 the department is a live one, the same 

 forces which impel its professors to snatch 

 from teaching some small part of their 

 time and strength for investigation are 

 almost sure to convert a part of the garden 

 into an implement of research. 



It is here that one difficulty in defining 

 a botanical garden enters. A very complete 

 gradation might be marked between so typ- 

 ical and well-rounded an establishment as 

 that at Kew and the grounds of one of 

 our agricultural experiment stations— or, 

 to follow another cleavage line, a park 

 planned to convey knowledge of trees and 

 shrubs while serving its main purpose as 

 a breathing place and recreation spot. 



Most botanists will probably agree that 

 any adequately planned and conducted 

 garden devoted to the educational dem- 



onstration or productive investigation of 

 plants is a botanical garden, irrespective of 

 breadth or specialization in performing 

 these functions. No small part of the cost 

 of maintaining an ordinary botanical gar- 

 den is incident to the need of making and 

 keeping it presentable and of cultivating 

 in it plants that require much care and the 

 provision of special conditions for their 

 growth. Even with the best that can be 

 done for them, such plants often appear 

 little more happy in their cramped and 

 artificial surroundings than the animals in 

 a menagerie; and as a class they are per- 

 haps even less indicative of the species they 

 are labeled as representing. Necessary as 

 such surrogates may be, they afford a nom- 

 inal rather than a real foundation for dem- 

 onstration, morphological investigation or 

 physiological experimentation. For the 

 latter purposes, and particularly the last- 

 named, supplementary research gardens 

 are necessary, where tropical, desert, al- 

 pine or marine conditions are afforded by 

 nature. Dissociated from the centers of 

 human activity, as many such establish- 

 ments must be and as all, perhaps, might 

 profitably be if their purpose is the solu- 

 tion of life problems, they need not neces- 

 sarily be burdened by the prior liens on the 

 parent garden; and if of independent 

 origin, for specific study, they necessarily 

 should not bear these trammels. Indeed, 

 from such special-purpose research gardens 

 or garden-adjuncts productive results are 

 as confidently to be expected as from the 

 laboratory or the study as contrasted with 

 a table and a book-shelf somewhere in the 

 house. Eeseareh gardens of this type, lim- 

 ited to and concentrated on a specific line 

 of inquiry, are likely to appear with in- 

 creasing frequency in the next few decades. 

 The results that come from them should 

 bear a close ratio in quantity and quality 

 to the freedom for investigation enjoyed 



