NEWS NOTES 



On July 24. the fiftieth anniversary of his joining the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, David Fairchild was presented with the Frank 

 N. Meyer Medal in recognition of his work as a plant explorer. 

 The establishing of this medal with funds left by Meyer in his 

 will for members of the Bureau of Plant Introduction is described 

 in Fairchild's book, The IVorld Was My Garden. 



A COLLECTION of 8,257 herbarium sheets of plants from Eng- 

 land, continental Europe, northeastern United States and adjacent 

 Canada, has been presented to the New York Botanical Garden by 

 Mrs. T. W. Edmondson. The plants were collected by Dr. Ed- 

 mondson, professor of mathematics and physics, and at the time 

 of his death last fall professor emeritus, at New York University. 

 The plants were collected on vacations over many years. 



L. J. Brass, botanist of the Archbold Expedition of the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History to New Guinea, has recently re- 

 turned. His botanical collections include over 5,000 numbers, 

 mostly obtained from areas above 3,000 feet. He also made a 

 collection of 150 negatives of typical landscapes of the regions 

 where he collected. These latter will be used in making back- 

 grounds of proposed museum habitat groups. 



Dr. Henry C. Cowles, professor emeritus of botany at the 

 University of Chicago, died on September 12 in his seventieth 

 year. Doctor Cowles became an instructor in botany at the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago in 1902, an assistant professor in 1907 and was 

 chairman of the department from 1925 to 1934, when he became 

 professor emeritus. He was editor of The Botanical Gasette from 

 1925 to 1934. He was the author of several books and of articles 

 on ])lant ecology. 



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