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Dr. D. T. MacDougal, director of the department of Botanical 

 Research of the Carnegie Institution, has gone to Egypt to 

 prosecute studies on the desert vegetation of that region. Dr. 

 W. A. Cannon recently returned from a preliminary survey of 

 the deserts in northeastern Africa, under the auspices of the same 

 institution. 



At the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 meeting at Washington, D. C, during Christmas week, Dr. C. E. 

 Bessey, of the University of Nebraska, will act as president. 



We quote from the New York Evening Post (December 2) 

 the following, in regard to Columbia University: 



"A greenhouse and botanical laboratory is now in course of 

 construction in East Field, the half block between Amsterdam 

 and Morningside Avenues, which was recently acquired by the 

 university, and on which the President's house is being erected. 

 The greenhouse stands in the middle of the block, just back of 

 the President's house. It is to be used by professors and ad- 

 vance students in the Department of Botany. 



" In the conservatory, wh ch will be twenty-four by eighty 

 feet, plants for use in all botanical work, both graduate and 

 undergraduate, will be grown. Moreover, it will contain a 

 laboratory and a dark room, equipped with all the modern 

 appurtenances. , . . Advanced classes in plant physiology and 

 experimental botany will work in the conservatory, as will the 

 groups in experimental plant pathology." 



From the New York Evening Sun (December 11) we learn that 

 Sir Joseph Hooker has died. Joseph Dalton Hooker was a re- 

 tired surgeon of the Royal Navy and late director of the Royal 

 Gardens at Kew. He was born at Halesworth, Suffolk, June 30, 

 1817. He was educated at the High School and the University 

 of Glasgow. He was surgeon and naturalist on his Majesty's 

 ship Erebus in the Antarctic expedition under Sir James Ross 

 in 1839-43. He visited as a naturalist the Himalaya Mountains, 

 Syria and Palestine, Morocco and the Greater Atla? . He was 

 in the Rocky Mountains and California in 1877. Sir Joseph was 

 president of the Royal Society, 1872-77. 



