PUBLIC BOTANICAL GARDENS 
THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM, Jamaica Plain, Mass. 
“The Arboretum is a Department of Harvard University and is a 
museum of trees and other woody plants. The Arboretum endeavors 
to increase the knowledge of trees by arranging the living plants in 
what may be described as a Tree Museum. This Museum, which now 
contains one of the largest collections of trees and shrubs of the 
Northern Hemisphere in the world, occupies 220 acres of hill, valley 
and meadow contributed for the purpose by the University and in 
small part by the City of Boston. Part of this land is occupied by 
good native Oak woods and a fine grove of Hemlock trees which 
cover the steep slopes of what is called Hemlock Hill, the crowning 
feature of the Arboretum. On the remainder of the ground the trees 
have been arranged in family groups and in botanical sequence, all 
the species of each genus being together. In the case of important 
native trees several individuals have been planted comparatively near 
together with a single individual of the species sufficiently far from 
any other trees to make possible its free and full development. For 
the trees of other countries only space has been found for a single 
individual of each. Hardy shrubs are arranged in parallel beds on 
the only piece of level ground in the Arboretum near the Forest Hills 
entrance. This arrangement has been adopted that students who 
want to see and compare the species of a genus of hardy shrubs can 
do so easily and in a short time. Everywhere else in the Arboretum 
the attempt has been made to so group the trees and shrubs that 
the natural features of the place may be preserved, and that, although 
a person going along the drives can see close to the road a repres- 
entative of every genus of trees in the Arboretum, he can do so 
without being unpleasantly impressed with the idea that he is in a 
systematically arranged botanical garden. A visitor, however, who 
sees only what can be seen from the drives gets little idea of this 
museum and its collections, which must be studied from the grass- 
covered paths which lead the student to all the groups and to the 
principal points of interest and beauty. 
More important for the increase of knowledge than the cultivation 
and convenient arrangement of living plants is the work which is car- 
ried on in the laboratories of the Arboretum, for comparatively few 
persons can study and enjoy these growing plants; but from the 
laboratories material and information reach far beyond the boundar- 
ies of the United States. There are two departments of these labora- 
tories, first the nurseries and second the herbarium and library. In 
the nurseries have been raised nearly all the trees and shrubs which 
now form the outdoor museum, and from them hundreds of thousands 
of rare plants, or plants entirely new to cultivation, have been sent 
out in exchange for other plants, to be tested in almost every civil- 
ized country of the world. In the library and herbarium the ma- 
terial gathered by the agents of the Arboretum is studied, and in 
its library have been prepared the books through which the infor- 
mation about trees collected by the Arboretum has reached the 
