The Social, Educational, and Scientific Value of Botanic Gardens

MSS. Intended for publication and books, etc., intended for review should be sentt to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrisonon-Hudson. N. Y THE SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF BOTANIC GARDENS' IT is a noteworthy fact that the United States is beginning to appreciate botanic gardens. This appreciation may be relatively superficial as yet, but the superficial is usually the preliminary step that leads to the fundamenitial. The desirability of botanic gardens was not obvious when large areas in a, statei of nature were available to almost every one; but when we developed congested populations in cities and made artificial most of our open areas, the thought of botanic gardens began to take formn. Those of you who have traveled, in Europe must have been impressed by the multiplicity of such gardens. They began there in the form of monastic gardens, in which the so-wcalled " simples, " used in primitive medicine, were cultivated. Then they eame out into the open as city gardens, chiefly for the enjoyment of the people and to beautify the city. Finally, they became also scientific, and gradually led to such great establishments as the botanic garrdens at Rome, Geneva, and Paris, the igreat modern gardens on the outskirts of Berlin and Munich, and that greatest of all garden establishmenls, the Kewr Gardens of London. These are but conspicuous illustrations of what almost every European city had developed before we began to think of garden establishments. I wish to speak of three conspicuous con-