Boyce Thompson Institute

William Boyce Thompson, copper millionaire and flora expert, was goodhumoredly sunning himself last week aboard his yacht off Miami. Less active than he used to be, he was pleased to learn that the balmy weather around Yonkers, N. Y., was enabling Director William Crocker of the Boyce Thompson Institute for plant research to start spending $3,000,000 which Col. Thompson gave him last year for a 400-acre arboretum adjoining the institute.

The institute, with 40 scientists whose various temperaments Dr. Crocker must coddle, is the most thoroughly equipped in the world to study plant life. Outdoors and indoors, under sunlight and artificial light, in natural and laboratory atmospheres, the institute men study how and why plants thrive or fail. Thus Dr. Crocker, as the seed specialist, discovered that most seeds sprout quickly if they are kept dry and cold between harvest and planting, knowledge which benefits farmers incalculably. Other information is that extra carbon dioxide, such as can be washed out of factory coal smoke, speeds up the growth of the plants.

The idea of the institute started one day years ago, while Col. Thompson was philosophizing on the meaning of life. He decided that since the Rockefellers were giving fortunes to improve human life, he might well give his to improve plant life, upon which the human depends. Two years in Russia, as head of the Red Cross mission, which he largely financed, showed him vividly how devastating the loss or lack of food crops can be. He has, during the institute's six years' operation, given about $15,000,000. His only heir is a daughter.

He built the institute across the high-way from his Yonkers mansion. The house stands in 30 landscaped, statue-dotted acres along the Hudson River. It is unique for its mineral displays. A mining man, he collected a vast amount of cut and crude minerals from all parts of the world. He told his representatives to place them in his mansion, not to spare any expense, but not to make "the place look too damn much like a museum." The present effect is now superb.

One room is a vast hollow of jade, in multi-colors and multitudinous shapes. In another great room are glass cases on glass pedestals. In the cases and placed around the walls are his many-colored rock specimens. They all seem frozen in crystal. Near the ceiling runs a frieze composed of transparencies which show western mountain scenes in colors. Varying illumination behind the transparencies shows how the original scenes change in appearance from dawn to night.

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