he did at his own individual expense, as early as 1801. It was situated about three miles and a half from the city of New York. It consisted of about twenty acres of land on the middle road.[1] It was selected from its varied soil as peculiarly adapted to the cultivation of the different vegetable productions. The grounds were skillfully laid out and planted with some of the most rare and beautiful of our forest trees. An extensive and ornamental conservatory was erected for the cultivation of tropical and greenhouse plants, as well as those devoted to medical purposes, more especially those of our own country.
"At this time there were under cultivation nearly fifteen hundred species of American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics. To this collection additions were made from time to time from various parts of Europe as well as from the East and West Indies. It was the intention of the founder of this beautiful garden, had his means been more ample, to devote it to the sciences generally, more especially those of zoölogy and mineralogy. This, however, he was compelled from want of fortune to relinquish, hoping that the State of New York would at some future day be induced to carry out the plan as suggested by him similar in all respects to that of the Garden of Plants in Paris; but in this he was disappointed. The State purchased the garden from him, but, like many other public works unconnected with politics, it was suffered to go to ruin. While it was in his possession it afforded him many a pleasant hour of recreation, and served to abstract him from the cares and anxieties of an arduous profession." Frederick Pursh, author of the Flora Septentrionalis, was for several years curator of this garden.
A jail society, which had existed in New York to supply provisions to prisoners for debt, was developed by Hosack into the Humane Society, with broader aims and means. The City Dispensary received no less his care and attention. He vigorously advocated a separate hospital building for contagious diseases, the strict enforcement of quarantine regulations, the substitution of stone piers for wooden ones, and urged that the city's sewers should discharge at the outer ends of the piers instead of at the bulkhead line.
His friends often wondered that Dr. Hosack found time to contribute so much as he did to the literature of his profession. At an early period he began the publication of the Medical and Philosophical Register, a quarterly journal, in which Dr. John W. Francis was associated with him. He afterward published
- ↑ The location is given in Mrs. Lamb's History of New York as lying between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and stretching from Forty-seventh to Fifty-first Streets.
