The New York Botanical Garden, largely through the efforts of Dr. N. L. Britton, the present director was authorized by the New York legislature in 1891. The act of incorporation provided that when the corporation created should have secured by subscription a sum not less than $250,000 the city was authorized to set aside for the garden as much as 250 acres from one of the public parks and to expend one half million dollars for the construction and equipment of the necessary buildings. The conditions were met in 1895, and the institution has since grown in its land, and its buildings, in its collections and in its herbaria, so that, in association with the department of botany of Columbia University, it now rivals in its material equipment and in the research work accomplished any botanical institution in the world.
THE SECOND PAN-AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS
THERE will be held at Washington from Monday, December 27, to Saturday, January 9, the second Pan-American Scientific Congress, authorized by the first congress held in Santiago, Chili, six years previously. This was one of the series of congresses previously conducted by the republics of Latin America. The Washington congress, which is under the auspices of the government of the United States, with Mr. William Phillips, third assistant secretary of state, as chairman of the executive committee, will meet in nine sections, which, with the chairmen, are as follows:
I. Anthropology, Wm. H. Holmes.
II. Astronomy, Meteorology, and Seismology, Robert S. Woodward.
III. Conservation of Natural Resources, Agriculture, Irrigation and Forestry, George M. Rommel.
IV. Education, P. P. Claxton.
V. Engineering, W. H. Bixby.
VI. International Law, Public Law, and Jurisprudence, James
Brown Scott.
VII. Mining and Metallurgy, Economic Geology, and Applied
Chemistry, Hennen Jennings.