Report of the Committee on Botany ? /f/f 
To the Board of Overseers of Harvard College: 
The urgent need of removing the botanical laboratories 
frors their present situation In the Museum Building was emphasized 
in report of your Committee of May 6th, 1916, and arrangements 
were made for the Departments of Botany and Zoology to take over 
Bierce Hall. Careful plana were worked out by a committee ap¬ 
pointed by the President in consultation with Mr. Burke, but all 
progress mas checked by our entrance into the ar. More recently, 
the dissolving of the merger with Technology has brought back to 
pierce Hall the engineers who formerly occupied it, and at least 
the botanists at the Museum (and apparently the zoologists also) 
find themselves just where they were - In dark and crowded quarters 
••'hich are disgracefully inadequate for good r?ork. 
Aa the situation new is practically the same as 
three years ago, we file a copy of the Report of May 6th, 1916 
herewith. 
Tour Committee had a meeting on April Z 3d, IBIS, 
with the Professors of the Department, and available •» in any 
building used by the College seemed out of the question. A new 
building therefore seems necessary if the Botany Department is to 
hold its own with other American colleges and universities. 
The laboratories in three fields of Botany, namely, 
cryptogenic work with cultures, fire rani water (formerly under 
Professor Th&xter, now to be under Professor Riddle), anatomy 
(under Professor Jeffrey) and physiology (under Professor Oaterhout), 
besides needing decently lighted and spacious quarters are them¬ 
selves constant menaces to the collections in the Museum, These 
laboratories are so dark, crowded and ill-equipped that they are a 
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