SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 3L 
for the purpose of working on economic entomology in 
Eastern colleges. 
The function of all educational institutions is to afford to 
their students the best practicable facilities for becoming. 
well educated. Occasionally the older institutions provide 
traveling scholarships for the purpose of giving their most. 
promising students opportunities for work which cannot be: 
performed at home. Iam convinced that the Garden can 
greatly extend its usefulness, and at the same time receive 
a direct return in material collected, by occasionally ren- 
dering it possible for its employees, or special students, to 
travel for purposes of study. As a first step in this direc= 
tion, Mr. A. S. Hitchcock, one of my botanical assistants, 
has been granted leave of absence for the winter, to form 
one of a party organized by Professor Rothrock, of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, for a collecting cruise in the West. 
Indies. Some valuable material and interesting scientific ob- 
servations may be expected to result from Mr. Hitchcock’s 
journey, as well as much merited benefit to himself. 
- Although busily occupied by the necessary routine work 
of the library and herbarium, Mr. Hitchcock has found 
time during the year to complete a local Flora of a part of 
Iowa in which he formerly lived, and has recently published 
it in the Transactions of the Academy of Science. The 
only other botanical work of any size which has been com- 
pleted at the Garden during the past year, is a monograph 
of North American species of Epilobium, on which I have 
been engaged for several years, and which will be published 
in the Garden volume containing this report. 
THE SCHOOL OF BOTANY. 
The recent publication* of a report on the work of the 
School of Botany during the first five years of its existence, 
renders it unnecessary for me to make more than a brief 
statement at this time. At the beginning of the present 
* Garden volume for 1890, p. 84. 
