BOTANICAL OPPORTUNITY. 525 



other class of facilities, garden plants require constant and expensive 

 attention if tbey are to be kept in usable condition ; and, with all of the 

 care that can be given them, they are forever performing the most inex- 

 plicable and unexpected gyrations with their labels, so that the collec- 

 tions grown in botanical gardens (because of their variety) are notori- 

 ously ill named, though it would naturally be supposed that they, of 

 all collections, would be above suspicion in this respect. 



My object being to speak of facilities for research, this rather than 

 education or entertainment, I ought to pass by this part of the subject 

 with a mere mention, but I can hardly dismiss it without comment. 

 Where the only object is to supplement the facilities for undergraduate 

 work, the scope of a garden can be very small or moderately large, accord- 

 ing to the courses it is to lielp elucidate. It may be confined to what 

 may be called a propagating bed for plants needed in quantity, either 

 in season or out of season, for class use, to an exemplification of the 

 natural affinities of plants, or to various other instructive synopses, 

 representing medicinal plants, fiber plants, forage plants, fruits, vegeta- 

 bles, timber trees, nut trees, shade trees, carnivorous plants, climbing 

 plants, the sleep of plants, pollination, dissemination, etc., or it maybe 

 devoted to several of these combined. If it is to be a ]3leasure ground 

 as well, not only should the art of the landscape architect be invoked 

 in the arrangement of the plants, but it is necessary to add collections 

 of decorative shrubbery and a large variety of purely ornamental flor- 

 ists' forms of herbaceous plants. If research is added to its aims, the 

 collection must be further augmented by specially selected groups 

 cultivated from time to time as needed for study. 



Unfortunately, few if any gardens are so richly endowed that they can 

 cover, in a satisfactory manner, the entire field indicated, or even any 

 large part of it. From what has been said of the peculiar difficulties 

 pertaining to the maintenance of botanical gardens, it is evident that 

 in no other line of securities, whether for x^ure research or not, is a wise 

 restriction so necessary as here. Once properly prepared, a species is 

 represented in the herbarium on one or more sheets of paper safely 

 and economically stowed away in a pigeonhole ; but in the garden it is 

 a constant source of care and expense as long as it lasts. Hence it is 

 possible for one of the larger herbaria to contain representatives of 

 more than half of the 200,000 species, more or less, of phanerogams, 

 and a considerable, if smaller, proportion of cryptogams, while it is 

 absolutely impossible for anything like this number to be represented 

 in a living state in the best garden. No doubt the local requirements 

 of every institution will do more to influence the exact scope of its liv- 

 ing collections than any theoretical considerations, but it is certain 

 that in most cases the greatest usefulness combined with the minimum 

 expenditure will be reached by adapting the synopses chosen to the 

 chief aims of the institution as closely as possible, and very rigidly 

 restricting the species cultivated to the smallest number capable of 

 adequately expressing the facts to be shown. Perhaps it is safe to say 



