﻿1903] NEWS 



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ern Wisconsin. For some years a marked decrease has been noticed in the 

 flow of this river, especially during the more critical parts of the summer and 

 autumn. The investigation which the Bureau of Forestry made of this 

 watershed shows that the diminished flow of the river can be traced to several 

 distinct causes. The most important of these are the changes that have 

 taken place in the area and the condition of the forests. 



The Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institution has made an appro- 

 priation of $8,ooG for the establishment and maintenance of a desert botani- 

 cal laboratory for the fiscal year 1902-3^ and at the request of the Execu- 

 tive Committee of the Institution Dr. D. T. MacDougal, Director of the 

 Laboratories, has been permitted to serve with Mr. Frederick V. Coville, 

 Chief of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, as an advisory board in 

 relation to this undertaking. 



The desert laboratory has been established for the purpose of making a 

 thorough investigation of the physiological and morphological features of 

 plants under the unusual conditions to be found in desert regions, with partic- 

 ular reference to the relations of the characteristic vegetation to water, 

 light, temperature, and other special factors. 



A resident investigator, to be placed in immediate charge of the labora- 

 tory, will begin a series of researches upon certain more important problems 

 outlined by the board, and facilities will be provided by the aid of which a 

 few other investigators from any part of the world may carry on work upon 

 any problem connected with desert plants. 



North America contains more than a million square miles of territory 

 known to the geologist, geographer, and botanist as desert. The conditions 

 offered vegetation in these districts show such wide departures from those of 

 humid temperate and tropical regions, the living flora is accessible to so few 

 workers, and the entailed investigations are necessarily so wide in scope, and 

 so expensive and difficult in execution, that the advance of systematic knowl- 

 edge of the fundamental processes of desert plants has been comparatively 

 slow, and this lack of information has made many current generalizations 

 concerning the activity of plants very unsafe. The establishment of this labo- 

 ratory promises results concerning the fundamental processes of plant proto- 

 plasm as important as any in the whole realm of botany, and withal results 

 which once known and incorporated in the science of botany might well offer 

 facts of the greatest value not only to the inhabitants of the arid regions of 

 America, but to the people of other desert regions as well, since no similar 

 inquiry has yet been instituted in any part of the world. —Jour, N, Y.Bot. 

 Garden. 



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Desert Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution. Mr. Frederick V. 

 Coville and Dr. D. T. MacDougal started on January 24 to make an inspec- 

 tion of the region along the Mexican boundary from the Pecos river in 

 Texas to the Pacific Ocean, for the purpose of fixing on a site. 



