DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 



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for the coming year. A student assistant, Mr. Glenn A. Gilbert, was 

 also employed during the spring term at department expense. 



Even with this addition, however, the department is not able to 

 keep its work up to the standard of efficiency formerly maintained, 

 and at least one more regular assistant must be added to the teaching 

 force this fall. I would also renew my request of last year for the em- 

 ployment of a museum assistant and preparator, without which it will 

 be quite impossible to keep up the museum collections and make them 

 fairly useful to the students and to the general public. Such an assist- 

 ant would not only save us most of the small expenses now incurred for 

 the mounting of local specimens, but would enable us to enlarge our 

 Michigan collections and make them measurably complete, which in 

 my opinion is one of the most important functions of such a museum. 



An examination of the following schedule of classwork for the past 

 year will show the basis for the statements just made as to the teach- 

 ing work of the department. 



Schedule of class work, 1908-1909. 



The number of students handled during the college year of 1907-1908 

 was 370, the number in 1908-1909, 619, or an increase of more than 

 67 per cent, while the teaching force was only increased from three to 

 four, or 33 per cent. 



This large increase in the number of students is in part due to the 

 larger entering classes, but also to the transfer of the sophomore 

 zoology (Zoology la and lb) to the freshman year, a change which, as 

 noted last year, was made against the protest of the department, and 

 has proved to be unfortunate in more than one respect. It is greatly 

 to be hoped that whatever may be the place assigned to elementary 

 anatomy and physiology in the future, the zoology may follow instead 

 of preceding it as at present. I would also urge most earnestly that 

 in the courses in agriculture and forestry, at least two full terms of 

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