94 The Botanical Gazette. {March, 
simple yet well constructed apparatus, are needed in all present ‘ 
laboratories. Not only do we need new kinds of apparatus, but itis _ 
also a matter of moment to know where both the old and new forms 
can be purchased at a reasonable price and without too great delay. 
At the present pedagogical stage of the science it is possible to buy 
only a few pieces that the books describe, and those must largely be 
imported at a cost that in some cases effectively excludes them from 
many laboratories. The annoyance of determining proportions, 
making drawings and carefully describing the required pieces in order 
to have them made to order, even for glassware, is too laborious and 
time-consuming to permit of doing much of it. At present many 
teachers are driven to making their own apparatus as best they cal, 
which as a rule is not an economic expenditure of the teacher's time 
or of the institution’s funds. Until the facilities for purchase, which 
now obtain for microscopical, physical, chemical and other kinds of 
apparatus, also.embrace physiological pieces, laboratories will not 
multiply, and the science be taught with the completeness that 1 
importance demands, 
ee 
Botanists, particularly those of the upper Mississippi valley, have 
been watching with considerable interest the formation of the faculty of 
the new Chicago University. Hopes have been raised, as we noted the 
high scholarship and particularly the high degree of specialization of 
the men that were being appointed, that the chair of botany woul ‘be 
filled with some specialist of repute, and that thus the new institution 
would set the pace for some of the older ones that have shown them 
selves laggards. 
Bur WE conress that it was with a feeling of sore disappointment 
that we read in the Chicago papers of the appointment of a profess! 
of “biology.” Apparently it is to be the old story of zodlogy ™* 
querading in borrowed plumage as biology, for the gentleman who has 
— . chi tee to be hoped that President Harper will see to it yee 
he chair of biology is divided before zodlogy teaching comes to gia 
for biology in th 
€ institution from which we expect so much. | 
