BOTANIC GARDENS. 7 



treatmeiit it is also customary to illustrate by proper groups the 

 forms which have become of special interest because of their food- 

 furnishing, textile-yielding, medicinal, or other economic value. 



View of Matn Portion of Temperate House of the Koyal Gaedens at Kew. 

 In process of repair. After a photograph. 



In order to accomplish these purposes a suitably equipped garden 

 must contain, besides the necessary facilities for growing plants, 

 museum buildings arranged f or the display of prepared specimens, 

 and if it designs to afford opportunities for research it must also 

 be furnished with a library and laboratory facilities. 



There are in the world more than two hundred institutions 

 designed as botanic gardens, a large proportion of which are de- 

 voted to the cultivation of decorative plants, or subserve the use 

 of pleasure parks, while only a small number are organized on 

 the broader basis of the needs of the branches of botanic science. 

 Thirty-six of these institutions are located in Germany, twenty- 

 three in Italy, twenty-two in France, thirteen in Austria-Hungary, 

 twelve in Great Britain and Ireland, and ten in the United States. 



One of the most widely known is the Royal Botanic Garden at 

 Kew, located on the south bank of the Thames, six miles from 

 Hyde Park. The beginning of the Kew Gardens may be dated 

 from the formation of the exotic gardens of Lord Capel in 1759. 

 After a long series of changes in ownership and purpose, addi- 

 tions and alterations in plan, the gardens were transferred from a 

 private possession of the crown to a national institution in 1840, 

 with Sir William Hooker as the first director. About two hun- 



