The Place of Botanical Gardens in Collegiate Instruction.

The splendid gardens under the direction of my predecessors in this discussion are well known to everybody, but this can not be true of the modest one of which I have charge. It will therefore be fairer to my comments on the subject if I say that it has been my duty, during the past fifteen years, to develop at Smith College, with due regard to reasonable financial restrictions, a garden which should be as well adapted as possible to collegiate instruction. It now includes these parts. First, there is an arboretum and fruticetum, of some 500 species, distributed, with regard partly to scientific arrangement and partly to pleasing landscape effects, over a campus of some thirty acres. Second, there is an herbaceous garden of some 700 species, arranged on the Engler and Prantl system. Third, there are three natural gardens, a rock garden, water garden and wild garden, the last as yet too young to be effective. Fourth, there is a range of well-built and suitably stocked greenhouses, nine in number with two attached laboratories. Upon the development of this garden rests my qualification for the part I have in this discussion. Naturally, it approximates to my idea of what a college botanical garden should be. I wish to ask you to bear in mind that I speak upon gardens in collegiate instruction, and I shall keep strictly to that subject. Many of my conclusions do not apply at all to gardens of a different type-public, university or other. Colleges differ much from one another in many features, but from our present point of view have these in common: First, they have only an undergraduate constituency, with practically no graduate work. Second, they have extensive grounds, usually of a rural character, which it is desirable to make as beautiful as possible. Third, they have a long summer vacation, with no summer schools or other instruction in that time. Of these conditions, to which collegiate botanical gardens must be adjusted, I shall speak in reverse order. The long summer vacation is even longer, from the present point of view, than its number of weeks implies, for most of our students do not know enough to make profitable use of the garden at the opening of college, while the great number of social and other distractions at the end of the college year, not to mention the attractions of the native …