138 



So eager was the desire of the early members of the Club to 

 observe how plants lived, that many of those able to own gardens 

 ignored vegetables and flowers, and maintained little botanical 

 gardens at their homes. Mr. Wm. Bower, for example, was a 

 hard-worked die-cutter of Newark, yet he managed to accumulate, 

 in his little city yard, a choice collection of native and foreign rari- 

 ties. These statements relate to a period when the most gener- 

 ous botanizing grounds were still within easy reach of everyone, 

 some of them existing even in the heart of the present city. 



As succeeding decades of extending settlement destroyed the 

 localities which had been so greatly prized, not only in the remote 

 parts of the island but in the country round about, these people 

 not only mourned their present loss, but were alarmed by the 

 handwriting on the wall, and the demand for a botanical garden 

 arose independently in the mind of every botanist, professional 

 and amateur. So early as 1874 the Club appointed a committee 

 to act with the New York Pharmaceutical Association in request- 

 ing the city to establish such a garden in Central Park. 



As the educational side of our work grew in importance, and 

 especially in breadth, and as the student body doubled and 

 redoubled, the cry for the garden grew equally loud from that 

 direction, and continued until at length it was satisfied. The 

 great value to Harvard and its work of the well-managed plot 

 that it utilized in this way was appreciated and often discussed at 

 the little meetings which gathered around the old pot-stove in 

 Professor Newberry's room, during his presidency of the Club. 

 Under the influence of Columbia's progress, as already 

 described, it appreciated this want as much, probably, as any 

 other of our botanical elements. Its peculiar relations to the 

 former Elgin Garden were recalled in the public press. A con- 

 tributor to the New York Herald, of November 26 and 27, 1888, 

 made an earnest appeal for the recognition by the city of this 

 great want. Dr. Arthur HoUick, to whose faithful and self- 

 sacrificing work as secretary, our Club largely owed its strength 

 for a prolonged period, directed our attention to these articles and 

 proposed that he write an official letter to the Herald endorsing 

 them. Such a letter was authorized, and it appeared on Decem- 



