86 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



our work was neither supervised nor corrected, nor were our 

 lists of species submitted as a part of our work. We were not 

 required to make herbarium specimens, although encouraged to 

 do so, and some of us did make herbaria on our own account. 



There was at that day a considerable collection of plants 

 known as the "Cooley Herbarium" that had come into the 

 possession of the College, and fortunately for me, it was in need 

 of being mounted and labeled, and it fell to me to do it. This 

 work which occupied my time for many weeks gave me most 

 valuable experience in a department of the subject that was 

 not taken up in the classroom. 



The College then owned an immense Ross compound micro- 

 scope, which we used to see standing in a case in a corner of the 

 botanical classroom. It was never taken out for use in class, 

 but always stood there as a challenge to us. I do not know 

 what anyone else did, but at last I could stand it no longer, and 

 getting permission from Professor Prentiss, who gave me the 

 key to the case, I locked myself in the classroom, and taking out 

 the ponderous instrument, looked it over, studied its complex 

 machinery, and made myself familiar with its structure and use. 

 This was my first use of the compound microscope, and this 

 was all the practice I had with the instrument while in the 

 College. It was not much, but it was a beginning, and it enabled 

 me to handle the next instrument which came into my hands 

 when a teacher myself, and to this extent made my own work 

 more successful. 



It was a primitive college, and the teaching of the sciences 

 was primitive. We may smile now at the kind of instruction 

 we received at the hands of the professors of that day, but it 

 must not be forgotten that science teaching was rather new in 

 all colleges at that time. Sciences were not well taught in any 

 of them. In many they were not taught at all. And it is the 

 glory of our Alma Mater that she encouraged the study of these 

 sciences. Forty years ago this was the only college in the West 



