Botanical Department.

In the palm-house at the Botanic Garden, there is now a large Cycas, or so called Sago palm, in fruit. In the centre of the great cluster of bright green leaves there is a globular mass of reduced leaves of a tawny color, many of them bearing on their edges flat and exposed ovules.

Mr. Beal of the class of 1893 has presented to the botanical museum, through Professor Farlow, an enormous fruit of Artocarpus, the species being that which is known in the tropics as the "Jack-fruit," allied to the well-known Bread-fruit.

Among the more recent accessions to the laboratory in Harvard hall are the dissecting microscopes for use in Natural History 3. They are provided with Zeiss lenses, maguifying from eight to thirty times, and are ample for all analysis of flowers. From Zeiss the department has received a complete photomicrograph outfit, for use in Natural History 7.

For the first time, the more advanced botanical electives are now provided with homogeneous immersion objectives, three of them being for use in the Cryptogamic, and the same number in the Phanerogamic laboratory.

Work is being pushed as fast as possible in the unfinished sections of the museum which are to be occupied by the botanical electives.

It is barely possible that the large laboratory will be in condition for use during the latter part of the present college year.