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The following in brief is my report for the year closing September 30, 1885.

Having at last been relieved from the teaching of horticulture,- something which I long desired, I have been able to give more attention to botany. So far as is apparent to me, the students are very attentive and exhibit a good degree of interest in the subject, though manual labor and military drill make it quite difficult for those who desire it, to spend much time "botanizing" at the college and in the vicinity. In the autumn term the Sophomores were instructed in systematic botany and in the afternoon of the same term, fifteen Seniors and specials spent two hours a day for four days in the week at laboratory work with the compound microscope. During one day in each week they received a lecture on the subjects investigated.

During the spring term, the Sophomores, in two sections, took a course much like that of the Seniors just referred to.

In the summer term, the Freshmen began the subject, and in two sections had daily exercises in structural botany.

Besides these, eight others, resident graduates or other students, took special work in botany. These were not in the regular classes, but received much attention and had free use of microscopes and other apparatus. They usually made some experiment, and all made observations, drawings and notes.

It is very certain that if others knew of our excellent equipments for a great variety of work in botany, a much larger number would avail themselves of the opportunity.

As my work is now mainly confined to teaching botany, it is likely to be little understood or appreciated by those who have a limited knowledge of the subject.

Only eighteen years ago, our best colleges and universities, including Harvard, required but six weeks of botany, with a chance to elect a few weeks more in learning to find out the names of plants.

It is only a ltttle over twelve years since the foremost colleges of our land begun to introduce laboratory work with the aid of compound microscropes and other apparatus.

Now, and for some years past, all of our students have been required to spend five-sixths of an academic year with daily exercises in botany, and then they have an apportunity to elect still more. Half of this time is devoted to laboratory work in the study of plant-physiology, by which students learn how plants are put together, and how they grow, including many things pertaining

to the movements, fertilization of flowers, and minute plants which are parasitic and injurious.

To give a little notion of the kind of work done in a modern botanical laboratory, I will mention a few examples:

Recently, a person who is now a professor of agriculture, spent one term in the study of the wheat plant, including the intricate structure of the kernel and germinating plant. Another, who is now a professor of horticulture spent over a term in a similar study of Indian corn. Two others who are now professors of agriculture spent considerable extra time in the study of forage grasses. Several others have studied grasses, two of whom made excellent exhibits at our State Fairs and one made a collection of grasses which went to New Orleans. Several have studied the smuts and rusts and moulds, including the cultivation of these minute plants.

Besides the regular class work in the forenoon, I venture to give you a brief account of what happened in one day at the time of writing this report. One student is poisoning dried plants before placing them in the herbarium; another is fastening these to sheets of paper, together with their labels; another is shelling out and putting away samples of dried seeds of weeds for comparison in case samples are sent here for identification; one is working on the history and structure of the Egyptian lotus from our botanic garden; another studies some old potato sprouts which have formed small tubers; another comes in by request of the professor of horticulture to study the structure of asparagus; another, who is an editor of a widely circulating horticultural magazine, is working on the structure of the asters, and other difficult plants which he is likely to have sent him for identification; another resident graduate from Japan is studying the smuts and rusts which infest our wild and cultivated plants, and is just now delighted to find the spores are germinating on some of his young plants of wheat grown in the laboratory. At the same time, an expert is employed at my expense to make drawings of grasses and clovers for a proposed work on these subjects.

In brief, the botanical laboratory is more and more becoming a place for daily resort by special students and by those who wish to look up something for some other class, or for an exercise in our popular Natural History Society.

THE MUSEUM OF VEGETABLE PRODUCTS.

This occupies the rooms over the laboratory and study. Much of my time. during the past year has been devoted to collecting, preparing, and arranging specimens in this museum. Unless one has done some of th's kind of work, he could little understand the great amount of time which is required to make a museum. Most of the specimens must be found and brought here, as they are not in the market. It is my plan to arrange most of the specimens in natural orders, though there will be some exceptions to this rule. The samples of timber sent to Philadelphia in 1876, and to New Orleans in 1884, have been polished, relabeled, and with many additions have been placed on exhibition.

The forest products so far placed on exhibition, occupy the cases and other space about 16x54 feet. At the left on entering the door are some 14 samples of natural grafts as they appear above ground, and samples of many more as they appear below ground. There are two logs grown over deer's antlers, two trees containing nests of wood-peckers, quite a number of slabs of our leading sorts of trees, samples of 13 sorts of posts formerly buried to show that it makes no difference which end up they are set in the ground; there are small trees

eight or ten years old from the arborteum, sections of logs of several kinds showing how they check at the ends as exposed in the mill yard, cuts showing much sap-wood, much heart-wood, or the heart one side the center, a number of trees injured by vines, one grape vine over one hundred feet long; several trunks which are very winding, samples of many kinds of knots cut and polished, some tough boards from second growth trees, some showing defects caused by dead limbs which remained on the tree. There are polished boards of our native and cultivated trees and shrubs in great variety, a collection of barks, of peat, of pressed wood to imitate carving, very thin sections of seventeen species of woods suitable for the school room to use as illustrations; truncions and crosssections of our native woods; samples damaged in various ways by insects; black ash, buttonwood, and white pine separating into layers; pieces of trees damaged by lightning, by mice, by squirrels, by birds, and by horses, where the owner failed to provide a hitching post; a very good collection of nuts and cones, and cotton; quite a collection of the cereals, such as wheat in various conditions and from several countries; twenty-seven sorts of sorghum, rice in the bundle as grown at the south, hybrids between wheat and rye, 90 species of grasses in bunches, roots taken from tiles which had been obstructed, samples of labels and plates as used by various horticultural societies; a typical set of fossil plants; a case devoted to Indian corn classified as dent, flint, tuscarora, sweet, pop, and "husk" or "poded" corn. Among the most interesting of these are samples grown from the "earliest" times by Indians in Florida, in Dakota, in Canada; corn in various stages of manufacture, corn with a different even number of rows from four to thirty-six, ears with the rows running spirally, ears without evidence of rows, corn which has been crossed, ears of many colors, and ears each one of which shows more than one color of corn, ears doubled at the end, corn inside the cob, ears which taper very much, ears defective, ears with much silk, ears where every kernel is covered by a nusk of its own, a stalk containing seven ears, one 15 feet high with the tip of the ear nearly 12 feet from the ground. This collection of Indian corn is thought to be very complete for this country.

In one case is a beginning of a typical collection of mosses, liverworts, lichens, fungi, ferns, rushes, etc., so arranged that a visitor may get a little notion of these orders of plants.

In future, it is the intention to keep the museum open every day. Visitors who wish to receive much benefit from the specimens should take time to read the labels.

THE HERBARIUM.

For a year past, I have given more attention to the herbarium than ever before. While I did the work of a Professor of Horticulture, no time could be spared for this work. An herbarium is as necessary for the student of botany as a Shorthorn herd book is to the breeder of one of the leading kinds of cattle. We have been mounting the addition of 2,500 species of European plants sent us from Harvard University. To the "outsider" any amount of work may be placed on an herbarium without making any show.

THE BOTANIC GARDEN.

This has run along about as usual with some improvements by way of adding plants and adding some earth in low places.

As is well known by those who have recently been at the Agricultural College,

the botanic garden is situated on the east side of the brook which runs between the green-house and the botanical laboratory. A rustic foot bridge enables people to pass from one high bank to the other. Boulders, large and small, have been freely used about the slopes and the different orders of plants, and for steps or seats on the shady bank or near the water. The garden is divided into 41 wards, each of which contains plants of one or more natural orders. There is a printed guide with a map to the garden, given as part of a former report. These are given to my students to help in their studies of botany. During the past year, three numbers of the College Speculum contained somewhat lengthy articles in regard to the botanic garden. From this place I took a dozen or more interesting aquatics to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Ann Arbor. The garden requires considerable attention to keep the plants and labels in their proper places, and to replenish the vacancies which are always to be found. No attempt is made to keep everything in the style of a flower garden on a fine lawn, yet it is common to hear the remark from visitors, "This suits me the best of any place at the college."

Here the florist finds much to admire, the artist picks out the views which suit him best, and no doubt poets and lovers find this a pleasant resort, while the pleasure seeker thinks it worth looking over. The farmer's wife thinks "it is nice," while the husband takes notes with a determination to fix up that rough piece of his back of the house. The young girl thinks "it cute," while the students of entomology and botany think it a little paradise.

THE ARBORETUM.

This contains a little less than two acres and is situated between the houses of Dr. Kedzie, the secretary, and the highway at the north. It was begun ten years ago and now presents many things of interest to the botanist, horticulturalist or any one who has an eye to the beauties of nature. It now contains about two hundred species of trees and shrubs, nearly all of which are labeled. Quite a number have fruited, some of them more than once. Of those fruiting, I may mention white ash, basswood, catalpa, sugar maple, ash leaved maple, red elm, silver maple, mountain maple, chestnut, chinquapin, white birch, canoe birch, Hercules club, butternut, European larch, choke cherry, service berry, hop tree, alder, European apple about as large as a pea, probably the parent of our Siberian crab, and three or four others an inch in diameter, the parents of our cultivated apples. At this time a detailed account of the arboretum would seem to be out of place.

DONATIONS.

The donations have been as follows:

Prof James Satterlee, Lansing, Mich. :

One knarl from a chestnut tree.

The heirs of F. S. Sleeper, Class of '68, Galesburg, Mich:
Seventy-five dry herbaceous plants.

J. W. Higbee, Class of '74, Colfax, Washington:

Samples of wheat, oats, and barley.

Prof. Edgar Grimm, Class of '73, Corvallis, Oregon:

Four samples wheat.

Fred Schumacher, Akron, Ohio:

One package corn, oats and barley chop.

One package barley chop.

One package gram. wheat meal.
One package oat flour.

Ono package cracked wheat.

One package gram. yellow corn meal.

One package barley meal.

One package rye flour.

One package barley flour.

One package white corn flour.

One package rye shorts.

One package bolted yellow corn meal.

One package rolled wheat.

One package oat bran.

One package oat dust.

One package oat shorts.

One package Avena A. & B. oatmeal.
One package hulled oats.

One package pearl wheat.

One package rolled wheat.

One package wheat.
One package barley.

One package pearl barley.

One package cracked barley.

One package farina.

One package hominy.

One package yellow cracked corn.

One package gram.

One package corn meal.

One package white corn farina.

One package samp.

Hon. T. T. Lyon, South Haven, Mich. :

One cocoanut in shuck.

Fossil wood from Arizona.

Frank Wells, Lansing, Mi h. :

Three reed fish poles, Arundinaria tecta.

Thomas Foster, Lansing, Mich. :

One beech natural graft.

Miss May Chapman, Bangor, Mich. :

One orchis.

MISCELLANEOUS WORK.

The number and variety of questions asked is on the increase, requiring a good deal of time for replies.

After serving as secretary of the American Pomological Society for four years and editing two reports, I positively declined to serve for a third term. The last meeting was held at Grand Rapids. It was well attended and considered by many good judges to be the best meeting of the kind ever held in America.

Several invitations to lecture, including some from other States, were declined. I attended the usual number of farmers' institutes.

In accordance with a new act of the Legislature, I prepared one bulletin which was, "Testing the Vitality of Seeds buried in the Soil." This was

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