181 
THE NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE LABO- 
RATORIES. 
In filling the position of director of the laboratories, made va- 
cant by the resignation of Dr. Gager to accept the professorship 
of botany in the University of Missouri, the scientific directors, 
at their meeting on June 13, considered the subject in all its bear- 
ings and concluded that it would be most desirable for much of 
the Garden’s work to secure a plant pathologist ; Professor Fred 
J. Seaver, of the North Dakota Agricultural College, was invited 
to accept the post, which he subsequently did, and reported for 
duty early in September. Mr. Seaver graduated from Morning- 
side College in 1902, and subsequently studied as a university 
scholar in botany at the State University of Iowa, and served as 
a special assistant to Dr. J. C. Arthur at Purdue University. He 
held a fellowship in botany at the State University of Iowa dur- 
ing 1903 and 1904, where he received the degree of master of 
science ; he held a Columbia University fellowship in botany in 
1906 and 1907, and carried on investigations at the New York 
Botanical Garden during that period. He was a botanical assis- 
tant at the University of Iowa in 1904 and 1905, instructor in biol- 
ogy in Iowa Wesleyan University, 1905-1906, and has recently 
been assistant professor of botany in the North Dakota Agricultu- 
ral College. Mr. Seaver’s original investigations have been upon 
certain groups of minute fungi parasitic on living plants and this 
knowledge will be of great advantage to us in the cultural work 
of the Garden. Mr. Seaver will also prepare some of the mono- 
graphs of groups of fungi for ‘‘ North American Flora,” in addi- 
tion to his regular work of supervising the work of students. 
