174 



roVULAR 8CIENCE MONTELY. 



great historic value in connection with the work of Dr. John Torrey 

 and the earlier holanical development of America is included. Acces- 

 sions are being made to the herbarium at the rate of iifty to a hundred 

 thousand specimens annually. 



Tbe laboratories consist of a series of rooms facing northward and 

 wcstward, with special facilities for taxonomic, embryological and 

 morphological investigations. Physiological and photographic dark- 

 rooms, the experiment room for living plants and chemical laboratories 

 offer especially ample opportunities for the record and development 

 of practically all phases of plant physiology. The laboratories, library 

 and herbarium are open to .the graduate students from Columbia 



In the Fobest. 

 University, in addition to those from other institutions of learning who 

 may register directly at the Garden. The latter, in return, have the 

 privileges of students at Columbia University. 



A weekly convention of all of the workers in botany in New York 

 City is held in the museum, at which the results of recent researches 

 are given or an address is made by an invited speaker from out of 

 the city. 



The area of the Garden presents a very irregular topography, com- 

 prising, as it does, a half mile of the valley of the Bronx River, low 

 marshes and swamps, artificial lakes, open glades, with heavy peaty 

 soil, upland plains with gravelly sandy soil, granite ridges, and about 

 seventy acres of natural forest. About forty acres of this forest con- 

 sist of a dense grove of hemlocks, which has never been seriously 



