NEWS NOTES 



Dr. Elmer D. Merrill, director of the New York Botanical 

 Garden for the past five years, has accepted the position of head 

 of the Harvard University botanical units. The appointment 

 is regarded as one of the most important ever made in the field 

 of botany in the United States. The eight units Dr. Merrill will 

 be in charge of are the Gray Herbarium at Cambridge, the Far- 

 low Herbarium and library, the Arnold Arboretum at Jamaica 

 Plains, Mass., the tropical botanical garden at Cienfuegos, Cuba, 

 the Harvard Forest for research work at Petersham, Mass., the 

 Bussey Institution for botanical research at Forest Hills, Mass., 

 and the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum at Cambridge, 

 celebrated for its collection of glass flowers. Before coming to 

 New York to succeed Dr. Britton as the second director of the 

 Botanical Garden, Dr. Merrill was for six years dean of the 

 University of California College of Agriculture and director of 

 the California Botanical Garden. Previously he had spent 

 twenty years in the Philippines being director of the Bureau of 

 Science there from 1919 to 1923. Dr. Merrill is known as an 

 authority on the plants of China and the Philippines and has 

 described over 3000 new species from these regions. 



Dr. L. H. Bailey has given to Cornell University his herbar- 

 ium and library which will be known as the Liberty Hyde 

 Bailey Hortorium. The herbarium consists of some 125,000 

 mounted sheets especially rich in cultivated plants and includ- 

 ing type specimens of various palms and species of Carex, Vitis, 

 Rubus and other genera. A full time curator will be appointed 

 by the university to care for the hortorium. One or more grad- 

 uate fellowships, to be known as the Liberty Hyde Bailey 

 Botanical Fellowships, will be established. 



The Brooklyn Botanic Garden reports that the attendance 

 during May was over a quarter of a million, the largest monthly 

 attendance in the history of the Garden. 



The New York Botanical Garden in cooperation with the 

 New York Bird and Tree Club is to establish a bird sanctuary 

 in the woodland of the Garden. A nine-acre tract will be en- 

 closed and only people with "a sincere interest in wild life" will 

 be admitted to this region, where it is expected many birds 



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