Laboratories 



The report of the Director of the Laboratories, Mr. 

 Seaver, shows that during the year 39 special students 

 and investigators have taken advantage of the facilities 

 for study offered by the Garden, in consultation with 

 various members of the staff; this number is somewhat 

 higher than the average of the past ten years, and a great 

 variety of subjects has been included in the investiga- 

 tions prosecuted. The system of conferences of students 

 and members of the staff on the first Wednesday of each 

 month has been continued. Reports of the subjects dis- 

 cussed at these conferences have been published in suc- 

 cessive numbers of the Journal. 



The Director of the Laboratories has also given close 

 attention to diseases of trees and of other plants caused 

 by insects and fungi, and has answered a great many 

 inquiries in this important subject of plant pathology. 

 He also had the meteorological records in charge; the prin- 

 cipal meteorological feature was the protracted summer 

 drought, details of which were published in the October 



The Tropical Laboratory, maintained by the Garden 

 in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture of 

 the island of Jamaica, continues to be very useful; it was 

 occupied during the summer by Professor Duncan S. 

 Johnson of Johns Hopkins University with five research 

 students interested in plant ecology and plant cytology. A 

 visit to Cinchona is an important part of the liberal edu- 

 cation of a botanist, whether subsequently engaged in 

 teaching or in investigation. 



Teaching 



Public lectures, covering a wide range of botanical and 

 horticultural topics, have been delivered on each Saturday 

 afternoon from April 30 to November 19. In previous 

 years such lectures have been given in two series, one in 

 the spring, the other in the autumn, but this year they were 



