REPORT OF THE PROFESSOR OF BOTANY. 83 



to the movements, fertilization of flowers, and minute plants which are para- 

 sitic and injurious. 



To give a little jiotion of the kind of work done in a modern botanical labor- 

 atory, I will mention a few examples: 



Kecently, 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 pro- 

 fessors of agriculture spent considerable extra time in the study of forage 

 grasses. Several others have studied grasses, two of whom made excellent ex- 

 hibits at our State Fairs and one made a collection of grasses Avhicli 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 phicingthem in the herbarium; another 

 is fastening tliese to sheets of paper, together with their labels; another is shell- 

 ing out and putting away samples of driel seeds of weeds for comparison in case 

 samples are sent here for identifiaation; one is working on the history and 

 structure of the Egyptian lotus from our botanic garden; another studies some 

 old potato sprouts which luve formed small tubers; another comes in by re- 

 quest of the professor of horticulture to study the structure of asparagus; an- 

 other, who is an editor of a widely circulating horticultural magazine, is work- 

 ing on the structure of the asters, and other ditiicult 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 em- 

 ployed 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 MUSEU^i 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 Avill be some exceptions to this rule. The samples of 

 tindjcr sent to Philadelphia in 187G, and to New Orleans in 1884, have been 

 polished, relabeled, and with manyTidditions have been placed on exhibition. 



The forest prolucts so far ])laced on exhibition, occupy the cases and other 

 space about l()x54 feet. At the left on entering the door are som*^ 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 })osts formerly buried to show that it makes 

 no diiference whicli end up they arc set in the ground; there are sma 1 trees 



