Main Entrance to the Missouri Botanical Garden and Entrance to Its famous Class Gardens. 
The Missouri Botanical Garden 
1""^HE cultivation of plants for their healing qualities 
by the monks of the middle ages is generally sup- 
posed to have been the forerunner of the modern 
botanical garden, although these mediaeval gardens 
doubtless had their origin in others of greater an- 
tiquity. In a recent treatise on embroidery and lace 
by a Frenchman, the ingenious theory is advanced 
that the idea of a botanical garden originated during 
the sixteenth century in France, when the demand 
for flowers and fruits to serve as patterns for the de- 
signing of brocades caused the horticulturist Gene 
Robin, to open a little garden, with conservatories in 
which he cultivated strange and little known varie- 
ties. This proved to be such a success that Henry IV. 
purchased the establishment and under the name of 
"The Garden of the King," it became crown property. 
In 1626 the learned Guy de Brosse suggested , that 
medical students might study these plants without 
interfering with the designers pf embroidery and 
tapestry. Hence the first Jardin des Plantes, with its 
natural history museum, came into existence. This 
institution served so many excellent purposes that! 
other countries rapidly attempted to duplicate it — 
the author- concluding with the naive statement "Who 
would have thought it possible for embroidery thus 
to come to the aid of science?" 
The modern botanical garden has a number of func- 
tions which did not appear simultaneously, but were 
a matter of gradual development. Beginning with 
the utilitarian idea, there were added the aesthetic^ 
the scientific and the educational, using these words 
in the broadest sense. Depending largely upon local 
conditions, these functions have been given different 
degrees of prominence, some gardens being essen- 
tially aesthetic, some mainly scientific, and others 
combining in about equal proportions all of the ele 1 
ments mentioned. Certainly the modern tendency is 
to make the botanical garden something more than a 
"museum of living plants" which, however neces- 
sary, is to a large degree uninteresting and lacking 
in its appeal to the public. 
Most botanical gardens in this country are either 
connected with some institution of learning, or main- 
tained wholly or in part by the municipality. In this 
respect the Missouri Botanical Garden is unique, 
since it has no connection whatsoever with the city, 
A Spring and a fall Scene in the Glass Gardens of the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis. Mo. 
235 
