Septembee 13, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



373 



fruits, vegetables, timber trees, nut trees, 

 shade trees, carnivorous plants, climbing 

 plants, the sleep of plants, pollination, dis- 

 semination, etc., or it may be devoted to 

 several of these combined. If it is to be a 

 pleasure 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 florists' 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 indi- 

 cated, or even any large part of it. From 

 what has been said of the peculiar difficul- 

 ties pertaining to the maintenance of botani- 

 cal gardens, it is evident that in no other 

 line of facilities, whether for pure 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 

 stored away in a pigeon hole ; but in the 

 garden it is a constant source of care and 

 expense so 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 abso- 

 lutely impossible for anything like this 

 number to be represented in a living state 

 in the best garden. No doubt the local re- 

 quirements of every institution will do more 

 to influence the exact scope of its living 

 collections than any theoretical considera- 

 tions, 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 pos- 



sible, and very rigidly restricting the spe- 

 cies cultivated to the smallest number ca- 

 pable of adequately expressing the facts 

 to be shown. Perhaps it is safe to say that 

 an institution able to maintain a herbarium 

 of half a million specimens, representing 

 one-fifth as many species, is doing exceed- 

 ingly well, if it has in cultivation at any 

 one time 10,000 species of the higher plants; 

 and there are very few gardens which actu- 

 ally grow half of this number, while no in- 

 considerable percentage of the plants culti- 

 vated are so deformed, distorted, dwarfed, 

 and imperfect, as a general thing, that they 

 can scarcely be said to represent the species 

 whose name they bear, either in appearance 

 or technical characters. 



This leads to the conclusion that not 

 only class gardens, but research gardens, 

 should be kept within reasonably narrow 

 bounds, so far as permanent planting is 

 concerned, while allowing sufficient elastic- 

 ity for rapid and ample temporary expan- 

 sion in certain directions along which work 

 is planned. This does not necessarily mean 

 that any considerable amount of land not 

 used in the permanent plantation need be 

 reserved for special expansion. As a rule, 

 the more important gardens are situated in 

 or near large cities, and the high price of 

 land alone would prevent such reservation 

 in most instances ; but the impure atmos- 

 phere of many of the larger cities is a 

 further and even a stronger reason for se- 

 lecting, for any large experimental under- 

 takings, a suitably located and oriented 

 tract of farming land, easily rented for one 

 or several years at a relatively low figure. 

 Granting the wisdom of such temporary ad- 

 juncts to a research garden, a step further 

 leads to a recognition of the possibility of 

 securing the most varied climatic condi- 

 tions by establishing branch gardens located 

 where particular kinds of study can best be 

 carried on. In no other way can gardens 

 be made to contribute to the fullest extent 



