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REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE LABORA- 
TORIES 
To THE DiRkEcTOR-IN-CHIEF : 
Str: IT have the honor to present herewith my report for 
the year ending December 31, 1907. 
At the beginning of the year the exhibition of the New 
York Academy of Sciences, at the American Museum of 
Natural History, illustrating recent advancement in the 
various departments of science, begun on December 28, 
1906, was still in progress, and remained open to the public 
until January 14,1907. This exhibition included the section 
devoted to botany, of which I had the honor of being chair- 
man, and some time was devoted to the supervision of the ex- 
hibits of the Garden and other exhibitors until the close of 
the exhibition and the return of the exhibits. 
During the first part of the year there was no regular 
Laboratory Assistant, but the duties of that position were dis- 
charged by Miss Alice Adelaide Knox, in return for the 
privileges extended to her as assistant to Dr. D. T. Mac- 
Dougal, of the Carnegie Institution. During the spring the 
experiments of Dr. MacDougal on the evening-primroses 
were terminated at the Garden, and the plants of his pedi- 
greed cultures were shipped to him at the Desert Botanical 
Laboratory at Tucson, Ariz. The arrangement with Miss 
Knox terminated on May 1, and on July 1, Miss Winifred 
Josephine Robinson, who is on leave of absence from her 
position as instructor in botany, at Vassar College, was ap- 
pointed Laboratory Assistant. 
In October, Miss Anne M. Lutz, cytologist at the Sta- 
tion for Experimental Evolution, at Cold Spring Harbor, 
. I., was appointed special assistant for three weeks. Her 
time was devoted to sectioning and staining material collected 
during 1905-06 from pedigreed cultures of the evening-prim- 
roses, for the purpose of studying their sporogeny and re- 
lated problems. Among the immediate results of a study of 
these preparations may be mentioned the confirmation of the 
