220 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



turned with valuable material from 

 Trinidad and Jamaica. Mr. George V. 

 Nash, who was promoted from the po- 

 sition of curator of the plantations to 

 the place of head gardener, spent Feb- 

 ruary and March at the Royal Gardens, 

 Kew, by special invitation, for the pur- 

 pose of selecting from the duplicates of 

 the immense collections of living 

 plants. About two thousand species 

 were secured, the greater number of 

 which promise to thrive, and form the 

 most valuable single addition yet made 

 to the flora of the Garden. Mr. Percy 

 Wilson, museum aid, was sent with the 

 Amherst Astronomical Expedition to 

 Sumatra in March and will spend about 

 six months in that region securing 

 specimens for the economic museum 

 and living plants for the horticultural 

 houses. Other explorations are pro- 

 jected for the present season. 



A set of propagating houses was 

 erected at a cost of $16,000 in the latter 

 part of 1900, some new road and path- 

 ways built to it, and other ground im- 

 provements made. The New York Cen- 

 tral and Hudson River Railroad has 

 completed a station on the margin of 

 the grounds, which enhances the beauty 

 of one of the principal approaches to 

 the Museum. Contracts aggregating 

 nearly $200,000 have been let for the 

 present season, embracing the comple- 

 tion of the main horticultural houses, 

 main approaches and grounds in front 

 of the Museum, fountains, roadways 

 and areas round and near both build- 

 ings. The income of the Garden from 

 all sources amounts to over $75,000 for 

 1901. The library was increased by 

 over fifteen hundred volumes and a 

 large number of separates during the 

 year 1900. The herbarium received ad- 

 ditions amounting to about seventy 

 thousand specimens, inclusive of the 

 Morong Herbarium of Barnard College, 

 which is deposited under the same con- 

 ditions as that of Columbia College. 

 Dr. T. F. Allen, the noted s])ocialist on 

 the Characeaj, has recently given his 

 collection of that group to the Garden 

 A\ithout reserve, and it is now in process 



of aiTangement under Dr. Allen's super- 

 vision. The economic museums have 

 been filled out in many important par- 

 ticulars, but remain in a skeleton state, 

 as a number of years will be necessary 

 to make an adequate representation of 

 many of the subjects taken up. The 

 exhibition microscopes installed a year 

 ago have been objects of great interest 

 and profit to visitors. 



The laboratories have accommodated 

 twenty-eight investigators during the 

 year, and the results of some of their 

 researches have been published as con- 

 tributions, or are being offered as theses, 

 by candidates for degrees at various 

 universities. These investigations ex- 

 tend over the entire range of botany. 

 Tlie equipment has been steadily in- 

 creased to meet the varied needs of 

 these workers, and the experimental 

 greenhouses afford valuable supple- 

 mental facilities in such work. In ad- 

 dition to these original researches. Dr. 

 N. L. Britton has finished a 'Manual of 

 the Plants of Eastern United States,' 

 which is being published by the Henry 

 Holt Company, and Dr. D. T. MacDou- 

 gal has written an advanced text-book 

 of 'Practical Plant Physiology,' pub- 

 lished by Longmans, Green & Co. Sev- 

 enteen popular lectures were given in 

 the lecture hall of the Museum in the 

 winter of 1900-1901, wliich were at- 

 tended by one to five hundred people. 

 The annual meeting of the Horticul- 

 tural Society of New York was held at 

 the Garden, May 8 and 9, 1901, and the 

 exhibition was notably successful. 



TEE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

 OF ELECTRICITY. 



In the Electrical World and Engineer 

 for January 5, 1901, the first number of 

 the twentieth century, appeared a series 

 of articles on the past progress of ap- 

 plied electricity and upon its prospects 

 for the future. Among the authors are 

 some of the most prominent of Ameri- 

 can electricians, such as Elihu Thomson, 



A. E. Kennelly, Louis Bell, Kerapster 



B. Miller, Carl Hering, H. Ward Leon- 

 ard, Patrick B. Delany, and some of the 



