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botanical gazette. [January 



relieved of most of the drudgery of teaching. This, how- 

 ever, is only a question of a few years ; for in nothing desir- 

 able can this country afford to suffer by comparison. 



The latest laboratory we illustrate in this number. It is 

 that of the University of Pennsylvania. This is the out- 

 growth of a long series of very slow steps. In the early part 

 of this century, Doctor William P. C. Barton, surgeon in the 

 United States navy, was made professor of botany. Though 

 he was a zealous man, and, for the times, well fitted for his 

 work, he left almost no impress upon the teaching of the in- 

 stitution in botany. We can hardly think the failure is at- 

 tributable to him. 



In the year 1865, the late distinguished George B. Wood, 



with a liberality as rare as it was praiseworthy, partially en- 

 dowed, under the title of the Auxiliary Faculty of Medicine, 

 five chairs. Among these was one of botany. It is true 

 that neither the salary nor the duties of the incumbent were 

 very large. His pay never, under the endowment, exceeded 

 five hundred dollars a year, nor was he expected to do more 

 than deliver thirty-five lectures for that sum. It is true, all 

 that the professor of botany did beyond this was fully appre- 

 ciated by the authorities, but it can hardly be said to have 

 opened any avenue for promotion, because no avenue was 

 possible under the circumstances. 



The first professor of botany under this endowment was 

 Horatio C. Wood, M. D., who was then distinguishing him- 

 self as a pioneer fresh-water algologist, and who afterwards 

 won even higher honors in the field of materia medica and 

 therapeutics. 



Professor Wood resigned his position in 1876, and Dr. J. 

 T. Rothrock was, on the suggestion of Professor Asa Gray, 

 irhosen to succeed him. The liberality of the late Eli K. 

 Price made it possible to obtain some dissecting microscopes 

 and to open a laboratory for analytical work. Beyond this 

 nothing could be accomplished, until the year 1881, when the 

 University, recognizing, at last, the need of more extended 

 botanical instruction, established a full chair of botany, and 

 undertook to provide a course of instruction preparatory to 

 medical study. The idea was a good one, but there were 

 insuperable difficulties in the way of its largest success. 



In 1883, the accident of two ladies (one coming from 

 China) desiring to study the natural sciences in Philadelphia, 

 and finding in that great city of a million inhabitants no place 

 where they could receive regular instruction, opened the 



