EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 47 
their proper sequence the other steps which have been 
recommended may be taken. 
Notwithstanding the limited force employed in the care 
of the library and herbarium and on research work, and 
the necessity of economy in all expenditures, the desira- 
bility of enabling employees of the Garden to enrich the 
herbarium by the results of their own collecting (which is 
recognized as one of the first principles of museum admin- 
istration), and to make ecological studies where plants 
grow among their natural surroundings, has found practical 
recognition in the action of the Board in sending Professor 
Hitchcock on a winter cruise to the British West Indies in 
1890-91,* in enabling me to spend some weeks in Colorado, 
in 1891, and some months in California and the arid 
regions of the southwest in 1892,} in a study of the Yuccas 
and their pollination, and in two extended vacations which 
I have been permitted to spend in a study of the botany of 
the Azores and Madeira.§ Assistants, on several occasions, 
have been sent on shorter collecting excursions. The 
Garden has also found itself in a position to enable Mr. B. 
F. Bush, an active student of the flora of Missouri and the 
adjacent region, to visit many interesting pointsin Missouri, 
Arkansas, and the Indian Territory, a full set of his col- 
lections being donated to the herbarium, while the Garden 
has published several papers based on them. || 
THE SCHOOL OF BOTANY. 
Mr. W.H. Rush and Mr. O. L. Simmons have contin- 
ued, through the college year 1895-6 and 1896-7, to act as 
instructors respectively in general and cryptogamic botany. 
Undergraduate classes have been conducted in elementary 
morphology and organography (1), elementary anatomy 
* Reports ii. 31; iii. 14, 17; iv. 47; viii. infra. t Report iii. 159. 
t Report iv. 16, 181. § Reports vi. 17; viii. 51. 
| Reports v. 15, 139; vi. 121. 
4{ The numbers in parenthesis correspond with those used in the last 
