hidden from clear view; the educational value of labels 



is not adequately utilized; and the horticultural displays 



are meager. I am informed, too, by competent authorities 



that some of our collections, notably that of orchids, are 



seriously degenerating. In all these respects the Botanical 



Garden should be a leader, both in methods of greenhouse 



culture and in the art of greenhouse display. For this 



there are needed a head gardener of wide experience and of 



superiority, and a gardening staff of skilled subordinates. 



The museum of the Garden contains three collections: 



the collection of fossil plants, the systematic collection of 



existing plants, and the collection 



. . . c The museum 



illustrating the economic uses ot 



plants. However laudable this conception of a botanical 

 museum, however valuable the collections, and however 

 instructive the exhibits, a walk through the museum gives 

 one, unless he be a botanical specialist, the impression that 

 the collections consist mainly of dead "specimens," from 

 one to another of which the eye wanders without seeing 

 striking features calculated to rivet the attention. Yet 

 during the past quarter of a century the museum as a 

 factor in education has progressed far from the earlier 

 idea of exhibiting dead "specimens" alone; it shows graphic 

 and artistic groupings of related things, with representa- 

 tions of their natural surroundings, making dead objects 

 appear as living things, full of the beauties and interests 

 of living nature. The fame of the bird and mammal 

 groups of the American Museum of Natural History 

 and of the Egyptian exhibits of the Metropolitan Museum 

 of Art have spread throughout the country and have 

 created an interest in such things in thousands of ob- 

 servers. If we had on our staff a museum specialist, 

 trained in the museum art of the day and possessing 

 imagination, he would show us, instead of a few dried 

 specimens of the cotton plant, a field of growing cotton; 



