tions to this end. He even at one time planned a grand school of botany with all the appendages and equipment necessary for a college of botany. This was modified in its first inception, but has been carried out to a degree. Very soon he built a botanical museum, bought herbaria and built greenhouses in which tender and exotic plants might be grown, while the grounds themselves were planted with many of the more hardy species. In 1859 he secured the passage of an act of the Missouri state legislature enabling him to deed or will to a board of trustees such property as he might wish, to be used for the maintenance of the Missouri Botanical Garden, as he prophetically named it. In 1885 he founded the Shaw School of Botany in connection with Washington University of St. Louis and provided for very close relations between the school and the garden. The estate deeded for the use of the garden was valued at about one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This has increased very materially in value with the rapid rise in real estate in and about St. Louis. From the small beginnings of a private estate, the garden has developed until there were in cultivation in 1906, over seventeen thousand species and varieties of living plants; fifty-five thousand books and pamphlets in the library, including a very fine collection of pre-Linnæan works, and five hundred and sixty thousand sheets of dried specimens. The garden has issued eighteen annual reports, and is in exchange relations with nine hundred institutions interested in botany, gardening, horticulture or forestry. The library is one of the finest of the botanical libraries of the world, and all resources of the garden are placed at the free disposal of those capable of using them. Thus Mr. Shaw's life-work has reached its fruition, and a fitting memorial is rising steadily to more and more impressive proportions.
Henry Shaw[1] was born in Sheffield, England, July 24, 1800. He was the eldest of four children. His father was a manufacturer of grates, fire irons, etc., and owned a large establishment. Henry's early education was obtained at Thorne, a neighboring village, and his favorite place for study was an arbor in the garden. He was later transferred to Mill Hill, about twenty miles from London. This was termed a "dissenting" school, but was also considered one of the best private schools in the Kingdom. He remained here about six years, leaving probably in 1817, thus finishing his schooling. He studied while here considerable Greek, more Latin, more than the average amount of mathemathics, French, and undoubtedly German, Italian and Spanish. With this scholastic training he began to assist his father at the home establishment for a year, after which he accompanied him to Canada. In this same year, 1818, his father sent him to New Orleans, mainly to investigate cotton raising. He stayed in Louisiana but a short time,
- ↑ Dimmock, Thos., Mo. Bot. Garden Report, 1: 7-25, 1890.
