aside of necessity on account of the war. I am very glad, indeed, to have it followed up now.

I have prepared a concise statement giving my view as to the need and the general scope of a botanical garden. I have not gone into the question of the plan, because I think that depends very largely on the scope, and very largely on the site. It must come in as a secondary consideration.

The statement I prepared is as follows: Botanical gardens, under scientific development and maintenance have become the most important institutions for the investigation, teaching, and display of the vegetable kingdom.

The number of kinds of plants is so vast, and their products so numerous that we are as yet only upon the threshold of knowledge as to their relationships, life histories, and uses. Plants furnish

food, forage, clothing, drugs, lumber, oils, resins, spices, gums, and a great number of minor products essential to the existence of mankind. Any discoveries of new facts concerning plants or new applications of old facts may be of importance in the relation of man to vegetation.

The desirability of bringing us closer and closer to nature has been emphasized by the necessity of conserving and increasing the products of plants, not alone of the kinds in ordinary cultivation but the immense number of other kinds not yet put into useful application. The best way of teaching this lesson is to bring together, under scientific arrangement, care, investigation, and explanation as many different kinds in as many different places as practicable. The number of well-equipped and well-maintained extensive collections of plants hitherto established is quite insufficient to meet this need.

Plant collections, by their beauty and their interest, are attractive to everybody; they give untold pleasure to great numbers of people and their reaction is elevating to all who visit them. Their greatest efficiency, both as regards instruction and enjoyment is, of course, when located within easy reach of dense populations.

The present Botanic Garden in the city of Washington is insufficiently developed, and its restricted area prevents any satisfactory rearrangement or expansion. The relocation, or new establishment, now contemplated if providing very greatly increased acreage, coupled with liberal provision for construction, installation, maintenance, research, and teaching under scientific direction, would, in a few years, provide an institution of enormous usefulness, of great beauty, of national significance, and of international repute.

Mr. MOORE. If you care to ask questions of Dr. Britton, he will be glad to answer them. He is the head of the New York Botanical Garden, which is one of the three or four great botanical gardens of this country.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moore, I am so ignorant of this entire subject, and it is so technical, that as you have the men here who are familiar with the subject, I wish you would put them on and put in your case, say what you think ought to be done, take their recommendations and substantiate your recommendations. We are here to get knowledge. We do not know what questions to ask.

Senator KNOX. I would like to ask Dr. Britton one question. What would your judgment be as to an adequate area for a botanical garden such as the United States ought to maintain here at the Capital?

Dr. BRITTON. I should think you ought to have at the minimum four or five hundred acres. You ought to have that to develop an institution which would meet the necessities.

Senator KNOX. What is the acreage of the New York garden?

Dr. BRITTON. We have about 394 acres.

Senator KNOX. What is the largest one in the United States?
Dr. BRITTON. Ours.

The CHAIRMAN. Is the Bronx Park a botanical garden?
Dr. BRITTON. Yes; the north half of the Bronx Park.

Mr. PELL. The Lorillard property?

Dr. BRITTON. Yes; it was part of the Lorillard property when it was condemned for park purposes.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you give us an idea of what the capitals of other large countries of the world have done in relation to botanical gardens-London, Paris, Berlin,, and cities like that?

Dr. BRITTON. Of course, the most famous institution of its kind in the world, and probably the most beautiful, is one which lies on the outskirts of London. That is the Botanical Garden of Kew. They have a total acreage of something like 300 hundred acres, and it has always been regarded as insufficient for their best development. That is an institution which dates back over more than a hundred years, and has been of untold value to the development of the British Empire and its colonies-something which they all look to. The old Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, though smaller, has been a center of scientific information since the time of Tournefort, about 1700. Then there was the great botanical garden up at Petrograd, where there were more kinds of plants in cultivation prior to the war than there were at Kew, strangely enough, away up there in Russia. That has been of enormous value to the agriculture and horticulture of the Russian Empire. There are others, of course, all through Europe. Those three may be cited at this time, I think, as the three most important.

The CHAIRMAN. Has Australia a large garden, or have any of the South American countries large gardens?

Dr. BRITTON. They all have gardens of one kind or another, very unequally developed. The Brazilians have an enormous tract of land right outside of Rio de Janeiro-3,000 acres. They have there a most important collection of trees of South America, etc. It is very valuable information which they send out. We need to have first-hand information, as these complicated questions concerning trees, and plants, and their application to man, are coming up frequently. The scientific repositories of knowledge are becoming of greater and greater importance every year. We have not enough of them. None of them are sufficiently developed to meet the needs of any nation, as I take it. Of course, they are coming to be more and more, but it seems to me you have an opportunity here to utilize the great resources of the United States.

Senator Knox. What is the nature of the demands made upon the New York garden?

Dr. BRITTON. They are of all kinds. There are questions all the way through, from the application of the most minute vegetables to health and hygiene, right through up to the most beautiful orchid, or the most beautiful dahlia, or the most beautiful lily that grows,

all the way through. You could hardly classify the questions. There are all kinds. That is the kind of information the public is asking for, and the demand is increasing.

Senator KNOX. I was going to ask you to what extent there is a demand upon you.

Dr. BRITTON. There is an enormous demand. We can not always solve the questions in one institution. Very often we are obliged to transfer references down here to Mr. Fairchild or Mr. Coville, representing the Department of Agriculture. Our staff is not sufficient, as at present organized, to answer all these questions. We really need a great central establishment, such as you gentlemen have in mind, to study this matter of the relation of man to vegetation in the United States.

Senator KNOX. The point I wanted to make was to show that they are not merely places of beauty, and for the gratification of the eye, but they have a utility feature of which the public avails itself.

Dr. BRITTON. I think that is the real reason for their existence; that is their application, at least. They are also beautiful. They are bound to be beautiful.

Senator KNOX. There is no objection to that, of course.

Dr. BRITTON. Not a bit. Our attempt is to make them as beautiful as we can, and we do in all reason, but we have to bear in mind that our chief object is the information and instruction of the public in the matter of the relation of man to vegetation, and we believe we are doing a great work.

Senator KNOX. You can readily see that we need to be fortified upon that point, because we shall be met with this flower garden suggestion.

Dr. BRITTON. You can take it from me that that is a secondary consideration as regards the real functions of botanical gardens.

Mr. FESS. How far are we on the way? Have we done well as a Nation in this matter?

Dr. BRITTON. We have not done as well as other nations. There are not as many such establishments in the United States as there are in France or Great Britain.

Mr. FESS. We have not done anything like as much as we should do? Dr. BRITTON. No. sir; we have not.

Mr. GOULD. Would the work that is proposed to be done here be a duplication of your work in New York City?

Dr. BRITTON. I do not think it would be a duplication, but it would be a parallelism, in which unduobtedly information would be divided between the two institutions, so that one institution would do certain things and the other other things. That is all we try to accomplish. Mr. GOULD. Would there be space enough in New York City for the Government to take over that botanic garden and add to it? Dr. BRITTON. I never thought of that. That is a new idea. Mr. GOULD. I am trying to save the Government some money. Dr. BRITTON. I do not think you ought to try to save the Government money on this proposition. You have to come to it sooner or later. You have to get a great deal closer to vegetation than you are. Mr. FESS. We all agreed on that.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you anything particular to say as to the propriety, inasmuch as this city is the Capital of the Nation, of its

doing something perhaps on a larger scale, and a little more elaborate than is done by a mere city here and there in the country?

Dr. BRITTON. I should think that would be the rational course to pursue, and one we would all welcome.

The CHAIRMAN. To have it as a model?

Dr. BRITTON. To have it as a model, and have it as a maximum. The CHAIRMAN. What have you to say about the wisdom of doing it as soon as possible, rather than to wait?

Dr. BRITTON. I think the sooner you accomplish it, the better. Of course, practical considerations may come up, but it seems to me it should begin right away. It ought to be developed over a series of years, rather than attempt to spend a vast amout of money at once. The CHAIRMAN. No; but as to the acquisition of a site, the land? Dr. BRITTON. That I should accomplish immediately.

The CHAIRMAN. You think it would be wiser to locate your site. and acquire the property if you are going to do anything?

Dr. BRITTON. As I take it, your park commission desires this land as an addition to the park system anyway. So why not secure it? The CHAIRMAN. Your theory is, as I understand it, that the Botanical Gardens should not only be made a beautiful park but also a great utility?

Dr. BRITTON. That is my thesis; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. In these botanical gardens, do they do anything in the way of propagating and distributing through the country various species of plants?

Dr. BRITTON. Yes, sir; they certainly do.

Mr. PELL. Is the object of your botanical garden experiment-that is, experiment in the sense Burbank is making his experiments or for the acclimatization of foreign plants and, in addition, of vegetables and trees from other countries?

Dr. BRITTON. Our work includes all of those subjects in a way. We do all such things. Of course, we do not do them all equally intensively, but we are supposed to be equipped, or might be equipped if we had the resources, to carry on all those lines of work. Every large botanical garden ought to have facilities for all those things.

Mr. PELL. A great deal of good work could be done in bringing over vegetable foods from other countries.

Dr. BRITTON. Look at the results reached by Mr. Fairchild already with the limited facilities he has and with no great facility such as is proposed to back him up. If he had had an institution of the kind proposed to furnish the means of experimenting, the benefit to the country would be enormously greater.

Mr. FESS. Doctor, originally the seed proposition was a scientific Now it has come to be pretty generally a distributive one throughout the country.

one.

Dr. BRITTON. Yes.

Mr. FESS. Is there any any danger of this degenerating into a thing of that sort?

Dr. BRITTON. Certainly it would not under scientific control.
Mr. FESS. Should it be under scientific control?

Dr. BRITTON. It should be under scientific control. In fact, if you want to make this a great institution of international repute, you vill have to put it under scientific control, and keep it there.

Mr.

agree with you, if it can be done.

FESS. I Dr. BRITTON. I do not see why you should not, at this stage of civilization. You are all looking to science practically to control the world. Science does control the world at the present time, except in its government. You can take that from me. I think you will find I am right.

Mr. FESS. I agree with you.

Dr. BRITTON. Science controls your hygiene; controls your transportation and your communication.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not mean that as a partisan remark, I trust? [Laughter.]

Dr. BRITTON. No; there is no partisanship intended. I am only speaking from the standpoint of a man of science.

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID FAIRCHILD, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

The CHAIRMAN. State your position, Mr. Fairchild.

Mr. FAIRCHILD. I am in charge of the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction.

The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been in the department?
Mr. FAIRCHILD. Thirty-one years.

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed.

Mr. FAIRCHILD. It seems to me that one of the greatest practical uses of the botanical garden is to furnish seeds for the commercial users of plants. In connection with my work I have had an opportunity of visiting 35 of these botanical gardens in differents parts of the world, and as illustrating the tremendous value of a botanical garden I would like to read into the record two noted cases of their use; one, that of the cinchona, which was established in the gardens of Buitenzorg, Java, which has resulted in the establishment of the monopoly in cinchona, which those of you who are familiar with the actions of the War Trade Board know was a very serious matter during the war. The shifting of the center of the production of quinine from the wild forests of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia to the cultivated plantations of Java was started from seeds introduced into the Dutch East Indies from South America. I was in Java when the first cinchona bark was turned commercially into the drug quinine in Java. I saw the industry start.

India rubber has grown in our time from a wild product, gathered by native Indians on the Amazon, to the product of over 2,000,000 acres of plantation rubber in the Dutch East Indies and the British East Indian possessions. The original trees are still standing of this Para rubber from which the seed was gathered, and the Dutch plant breeder, Dr. Cramers, of Java, who visited me this last winter, told me the only trouble was that the original introducer brought the seeds from only one tree and there are better strains of rubber trees in Brazil. The seed has been disseminated from this one tree standing in that botanical garden.

Of course, those two cases are tropical ones. But the same thing applies to our own northern crops. I returned from the Arnold Arboretum region less than a week ago, after a conference with Prof. Sargent with regard to the securing of all the pear seeds which we