and also to request the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to author- 

 ize the issue of an appropriation of $500,000 for the erection of suitable 

 buildings. It was referred to the Scientific Directors to agree with the 

 Commissioners of Public Parks as to the 250 acres of Bronx Park, and a 

 special committee on plans, consisting of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, 

 Dr. N. L. Britton, Professor L. M. Underwood, Mr. W. E. Dodge, and 

 Judge Addison Brown, was appointed with power to agree with the 

 Commissioners of Public Parks as to plans for grounds and buildings. 



On July 31, 1895, the Commissioners of Public Parks, by resolution, 

 approved the selection of a site in Bronx Park, and appropriated 250 

 acres of land in the northern part of the Park as shown on Map No. 

 568 of the Park Department. The first work accomplished immediately 

 after this appropriation of land was the labeling of the larger trees stand- 

 ing in the area and the removal of dead trees. Public lectures were 

 inaugurated on the evening of December 17, 1895, by Dr. Daniel Morris, 

 Assistant Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew, who lectured at the 

 American Museum of Natural History on "The Rise and Progress of the 

 Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England." A topographical survey 

 of the tract was commenced in August, 1895, by Mr, A. H. Napier, C.E., 

 and, after his untimely death in the autumn, was completed by Mr. 

 John R. Brinley and accepted by the Board of Managers on January 9, 

 1896; Mr. Brinley has served as Landscape Engineer of the Garden ever 

 since. The first planting was the establishment of a temporary nursery 

 near the eastern side of the grounds at a point just west of the present 

 propagating houses, and in the spring of 1896, this nursery was enlarged 

 and a border screen of trees was established along the Harlem Division 

 of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad; in the autumn of 

 1896, this border screen was continued around the northern and north- 

 eastern boundaries of the Garden and the nursery was again enlarged. 

 The tenth anniversary of this commencement of permanent planting 

 was commemorated by the Torrey Botanical Club on May 23, 1906, at 

 which time Dr. H. H. Rusby delivered an address upon "The History 

 of Botany in New York City" (See Torreya 6: 106-111, 133-145). 

 During 1896, the city constructed the Williamsbridge and Bronx Park 

 sewer through the northern part of the grounds, and during this year 

 the contractor with the city for the construction of the reservoir at 

 Jerome Park built, by permission, a temporary railway across the 

 northern part of the grounds, mainly on an elevated trestle, for the 

 purpose of transporting great quantities of earth and rock from Jerome 



