1880 .] 
9 
[Annual Meeting. 
The summer of 1879 was spent at Annisquam by the Custodian 
and a party consisting of Mr. Van Vleck, Mr. E. G'. Gardiner, and 
Mr. Warren. The collecting was more successful than during the 
previous year, but still a larger boat and greater facilities in every 
direction are imperatively necessary. 
In order to meet these wants in part the Custodian is now build- 
ing another boat, which will afford more room and give opportu- 
nities for collecting and dredging on a larger scale. This will be 
more fully described in the next annual report. 
The Laboratory. 
This department has been as usual very active. Instruction has 
been given to the usual classes from the Boston University and 
the Mass. Institute of Technology. Besides these another class of 
twenty-six persons, all teachers except four, have entered upon a 
course which is to last for two winters, or about one hundred 
hours, at the rate of two hours every Saturday morning. A small 
class of these advanced students have been taken through a course 
in Biology by Mr. B. H. Van Vleck. 
It will be remembered that at the delivery of the last annual re- 
port the courses of lectures then going on in this department were 
not finished. A few words only remains to be added to what was 
said in that report. The Custodian finished his part in the affair 
with respectable success. 
Mr. L. S. Burbank who followed with a course of Mineralogy, 
succeeded in keeping up the average attendance even to the last, 
and finished with a geological excursion to Marblehead. A 
steamer was hired for this purpose and the day proving propi- 
tious the attendance was large and the occasion proved to be 
instructive as well as enjoyable in other respects. 
After the close of the last lecture the teachers held a meeting* 
of their own, and Dr. Samuel Eliot, Superintendent of Public 
Schools, made some remarks of a complimentary character with 
regift'd to the lectures and the indebtedness of the teachers, which 
he thought ought to be expressed in a formal manner. Unfortu- 
nately, however,, the Custodian was obliged to be absent himself 
upon this occasion and no written account of the meeting was 
preserved. 
