PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 65 



In other words that a botanic garden simply differs from 

 any other garden in having its contents labelled with 

 botanical names (the labels certainly detract from the 

 beauty and restf illness of a garden), and in containing a 

 number of plants which at no stage of their existence can 

 be considered to be remarkable for beauty. 



They probably do not reflect that the outside is the 

 garden of living plants, the counterpart of the inside (the 

 museum or herbarium), or garden of dead plants, incom- 

 parably more numerous than those of the living ones, and, 

 unlike the living garden, containing plants from the poles 

 and the equator. The reason is because we have not yet 

 arrived at the stage at which suitable provision has been 

 made for the display to the public of dead botanical objects* 

 The time will come when the people will insist on having 

 a museum which will do for botany what the Australian 

 Museum does for zoology. I may neither be in office nor 

 live to see it in full development, but I may say that daily 

 for years past I have been accumulating botanical specimens 

 for that botanical museum. And believe me, that botanica 

 museum will be found to be full of interest. I speak with 

 a certain amount of confidence because, as you are aware, 

 this is not the first museum I shall have formed ab initio. 



It is not within the range of practicability that the 

 citizens at large will ever be freely admitted into the 

 National Herbarium, but I think I am entitled to look 

 forward, even in my time, to a capacious and well-lighted 

 building containing, within glass frames, small specimens 

 of every plant indigenous to this State, every weed and 

 economic plant found in New South Wales, and specimens 

 of every plant, showing the destructive activities of fungi, 

 both large and microscopical. This seems to me to be 

 perfectly feasible, and worth working for its realization 

 within the next five years. 



E— Mayl, 1912. 



