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2. good in size and number of species. One of the features of this Botanical Garden is a large greenhouse entirely devoted to economic plants and it was quite educational even to a Californian used to seeing olives, citrus fruits, and semi-tropical plants that made dwarfs of the plants exhibited here. The orchid houses are separated from the larger exhibition houses and some nice things were in flower: Calanthe vestichi, Coelogyne massengiana, Oncidium papilio, and one of the finest white flowered orchids I have seen, Cattleya intermedia elba. The benches are slatted and the orchid pots placed on top of inverted pots so that there is more circulation of air and somewhat better spacing of plants. About a foot under the growing bench is another bench filled with charcoal and the damping down water is applied here. Certainly the orchids seemed to be in good condition and very healthy. The cactus and other succulent plants were fair but these plants seem a little bit out of place in eastern Botanical Gardens. Here, as in most of the institutions visited the labelling was very poor. We found the ferns and fern allies very well arranged at the National Herbarium and Killip made us very much at home. Morton is curator of ferns so we had more to do with this Californian from Fresno and the University of California than anyone else at the herbarium. We worked at the herbarium eight and a half hours a day - Alice assisted me - and found the specimens so well arranged and easy to get at that we got done in two weeks all that I expected to do in the whole month of April. We met several of notables here: Swallen, Mrs. Chase, Correll, and so forth. Everyone was nice to us and very helpful. On the evening of our last day at the herbarium Killip invited us to have dinner with him at the Cosmos Club. We accepted and then there started a real wild night in Washington. After dinner and a few drinks at club we started a mad rush around Washington that finally landed us at Killip's apartment where we spent some time. Killip is a very good friend of yours and, after seeing, from West Virginia to Washington, every house where Washington slept, it was a relief to be shown the bed where Harper and Florence Goodspeed slept as pointed out by Killip. Really we all had a wonderful time, so wonderful that it took me a couple of days to get over the experience. Of course, we saw Congress in action, the National Art Gallery, and all that sort of thing. Killip and Alice are about an age, both were born and brought up in Rochester and knew the same people, and they were students at the University of Rochester, Killip '11, Alice '15. After this discovery was made Whitehead was an outsider and plants a mere matter of casual interest.

At New York Botanical Garden we were entertained by Camp and he showed us the high spots of the garden outside and the growing units. He also allowed me to do a little work on Selaginella. We had lunch at the herbarium and met Dr. Stout who wished to be remembered kindly when I wrote to you. However, I was greatly disappointed about New York Botanical Garden. I had always thought of this as being the best botanical garden in the United States. Outside it is rather good but the large conservatories are a mess: plants small and poorly grown and without any sort of arrangement, the begs weedy and most untidy, and the labelling poor indeed. At one time there was, first under Underwood and then with Benedict, a very wonderful collection of ferns and fern allies. Now there is nothing in the fern house except a few tree ferns and a bunch of junk. About ten species of tropical selaginellas are in the collection and about half of them wrongly labelled. The man in charge said the labels fell from the pots and, as he did not know either the ferns or the selaginellas, he had to guess where to place them. There is, however, a remarkable collection of the genus Echeveria, even a better collection than the one we had in Berkeley. Camp is quite a character and vitally interesting. He explained about the work he is doing with American azaleas through which he expects to perfect a race of horticultural azaleas comparable to the Ghent Azaleas. Here, at New