THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 



A REPORT ON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 



BY 

 THE SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS 



The original conception of a botanical garden, dating 

 from the sixteenth century, seems to have been that of a 



place in which there might be 

 Botam^aToardens collected living plants, especially 



medicinal plants. As a matter 

 of fact these earliest gardens were repositories of all 

 that was known about plants at the time, including even 

 the methods of propagation and the various horticultural 

 practices of the time. Once the idea was formed it 

 spread rapidly, and during the next three centuries 

 there were established in Europe, it is said, some 1600 

 botanical gardens. These were usually private enter- 

 prises, or gardens connected with monastic institutions, 

 or gardens under the auspices of universities. The 

 earliest gardens brought together living plants, but it 

 was only natural that in time these were supplemented 

 by herbaria. While some collections were confined to 

 medicinal plants, others covered wider fields of more 

 general botanical and especially of foreign interest. 

 In more recent years, with the growth of botanical 

 science, the scope and purposes of certain notable 

 botanical gardens have been much extended, and there 

 is perhaps a tendency for them to become again reposi- 

 tories of all our knowledge of plants. That this was the 

 thought of the founders of the New York Botanical 

 Garden is indicated by the statement of its purposes in 

 the Act of Incorporation. 



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