PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 19 



reformer's views were to receive wide acceptance, or in the 

 transposition of even a small family of herbaceous plants 

 from one region of the garden to another in consequence 

 of the publication of some monograph pronouncing, even 

 authoritatively, on its affinities. The Linnaean arrange- 

 ment has of course been given up in every modern botanical 

 garden and the natural system is to all intents and 

 purposes universally followed. But there the similarity 

 between gardens ends. In the first p]ace there are in 

 the botanic gardens in different parts of the world the 

 necessarily different climatic and other conditions to be 

 considered. Plants which need stove heat in Kew 

 grow in the open air in Kio de Janeiro or Buitenzorg ; 

 plants which in our northern latitudes can be cultivated 

 with success in open beds must be tended in frigidaria in 

 the tropics, if they be grown at all. Moreover no two 

 gardens, even in the same district, are quite alike. In 

 some the principles of geographical distribution are taken 

 as the guide in planning the garden ; in others a purely 

 systematic and taxonomic basis is selected, in others 

 again the physiological habit, whilst others combine all 

 three. The best gardens are those which enable the 

 visitor to learn not only systematic or geographical or 

 physiological botany but all of these, which are provided 

 with museums and beds of economic and medicinal plants, 

 with herbarium, library, and last, but by no means least, with 

 laboratories, where in short all the manifold developments 

 of the science during the last fifty years are represented 

 and allowed for. There are several such gardens now in 

 existence : time permits me to describe three only, the 

 Missouri Garden at St. Louis, the 's Lands Plantentuin of 

 Buitenzorg, Java, and the Koyal Gardens, Kew. 



With regard to the botanic gardens in the States I am 

 indebted for much information to Mr. Coville of the I'.S. 



