Mat 6, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



685 



taking rank in the achievement of its high- 

 est aim— the enlargement of knowledge- 

 there are last which shall be first and there 

 are first which shall be last. 

 ; William Trelease 



THE BOTANIC GARDEN AS A FIELD MUSEUM 

 OF AGRICULTURE 



A FULLY equipped botanic garden serves 

 more or less strongly a variety of useful 

 purposes. To the public at large its chief 

 function may appear to be that of a park 

 or amusement ground where the dweller 

 in flats may find, amid the fresh beauties 

 of a productive soil, rest and refreshment 

 for his soul, wearied by the daily dash over 

 a city's well fertilized but unproductive 

 pavement, and where the nurse-maid may 

 sit reposefuUy on a shaded bench and give 

 her charge a needed airing without fear 

 of death by passing automobiles or beer 

 wagons. To one interested in plants for 

 their own sake, the botanic garden often 

 means a place where may be found grow- 

 ing in conservatories or in the open rare 

 plants of native and foreign origin— 

 strange types that travelers tell us of in 

 their wonder books— tree ferns, palms and 

 exotic orchids. In European gardens 

 American trees may be most strikingly 

 present, while in American gardens it is 

 the European trees that catch our eyes. 

 The botanic garden is not, however, merely 

 a species of plant circus that the curious 

 may enter with the expectation of being 

 surprised at oddities in nature and horti- 

 culture. It is primarily an attempt to 

 represent the different types of vegetation 

 of the world. In so doing, however, the 

 native and agricultural flora is generally 

 neglected on the perhaps not unnatural 

 ground of its familiarity. 



It is not in my province to discuss the 

 various departments and aims of a modern 

 botanic garden. I wish to speak as a 



teacher chiefly of the economic section 

 already in botanic gardens, and to make 

 some suggestions for its further develop- 

 ment. 



A systematically arranged and well-la- 

 beled botanic garden may be called a dic- 

 tionary of living plants. You look up the 

 family, the genus or the species and you 

 find the meaning in the growing specimens 

 or you find the known plant, and the label 

 gives you its name and classification. 

 Plants are not excluded from the subject- 

 matter of the young child's continual 

 search for the names of things. It is the 

 fear of his frightful question, "What is 

 it?" that has been the end of many a 

 teacher's attempt to give simplified botany 

 or nature study in the lower schools. To a 

 teacher, if a botanic garden is to serve as 

 a plant dictionary, it should be built on the 

 type of a school or pocket dictionary. 

 Botanic gardens are perhaps too often on 

 the plan of those dictionaries of rarer words 

 that have several times been published. In 

 such a dictionary, says the author, it is 

 needless to give common words familiar to 

 all, as house, church and the like. Only 

 those less familiar words, then, need be 

 included which are at all likely to give 

 trouble to a reading public such as prag- 

 matism, esoteric and the like. A botanic 

 dictionary on this plan might be expected 

 to throw out such simple words as root, leaf 

 and bud ; but for the sake of the beginner 

 who may stand abashed at the tangled mass 

 of Greek and Latin roots that confront him 

 in his pathway up the steep ascent of 

 botanic knowledge, explicit definition might 

 be expected of such words as "the law of 

 priority," heterotypic division, and of the 

 recent verbal immigrants of Greek origin 

 not yet out of the quarantine of public 

 opinion. Few of these dictionaries of rarer 

 words are actually in use, for practise has 

 shown that on the whole it is the common 



