ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATIONAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 77 



able number of plants obtained in the course of his extensive travels. 

 The plot still remains, including the famity homestead, somewhat 

 modified, and it is a pleasure to know that it will be preserved as 

 public ground. 



Andre Michaux, in the latter part of the last century, planted 

 gardens at Charleston, S. C, and New Durham, N. J., but they were 

 essentially nurseries from which he sent seeds and plants to Europe. 



In the year 1801 Dr. David Hosack, then professor of botany and 

 materia medica in Columbia College, purchased 20 acres of ground 

 in Xew York City, and called it the Elgin Botanic Garden; in this 

 tract he accumulated, with great labor during the next 10 years, a 

 very large and valuable collection of plants. The institution was 

 transferred to the State of New York, through an act of legislature, 

 in 1810. and was then known as the Botanic Garden of the State of 

 Xew York. It was subsequent^ granted to Columbia College. 

 Funds for its maintenance were not provided, however, and it was 

 ultimately abandoned. Two catalogues of its plants were issued by 

 Dr. Hosack, one in 1806 and another in 1811. The condition of bo- 

 tanical gardens in America at that time is indicated by the following 

 note in Dr. Hosack's catalogue of 1806 : 



I learn, with pleasure, that a botanic garden is proposed to be established 

 near Boston, and connected with the University of Cambridge. The legislature 

 of Massachusetts, with a munificence which does them honor, have granted, 

 for this purpose, a tract of land, the value of which is estimated at $30,000 ; 

 and several individuals have evinced their liberality and love of science by 

 voluntary subscriptions to the amount of $15,000 toward the establishment and 

 support of that institution. Another is also begun at Charleston, S. C, and 

 a third is contemplated in New Jersey, in connection with the College of Prince- 

 ton. 



In the year 1824 there was published at Lexington, Ky., the " First 

 Catalogues and Circulars of the Botanical Garden of Transylvania 

 University at Lexington, Ky., for the year 1824," by W. IT. Rich- 

 ardson, M. D., president of the board of managers, and C. S. Rafi- 

 nesque, Ph. D., secretary. This rare pamphlet, which is not recorded 

 in Dr. Call's ven r complete life writings of Rafinesque, is of 24 

 pages, and is printed alternately in English and French. It is es- 

 sentially an appeal for plants and material for the garden, and a 

 list of species that it could furnish to kindred institutions. This 

 garden was evidently short-lived, inasmuch as in Rafinesque's 

 Xeogenyton of the following year, 1825, he remarks, " I mean, there- 

 fore to indicate and propose in this small essay many of the numer- 

 ous new genera of plants detected or ascertained, some of which were 

 indicated last year, 1824, in the catalogue of the botanical garden 

 which I have tried in vain to establish in Lexington." 



Relations of Botanic Gardens to the Public . 



[Extract from an article by Prof. N. L. Britton, in Science, vol. 31, April, 1910.] 



illustrating the value of an adequate botanic garden. 



Botanic gardens are immediate factors in public education and at the same 

 time places for public recreation and enjoyment. They could be called highly 

 special izerl parks, in which the plantations are formed and arranged primarily 

 with regard to botanic facts and theories. Botanic gardens are museums of 

 living plants which are treated as museum objects, suitably labeled, and are 

 installed to illustrate not only the objects themselves but their relation to other 

 objects. This museum feature, therefore, becomes a direct and immediate func- 

 tion in imparting information to the public. 



