LARGE GIFT IS DONATED TO UNIVERSITY BY BEMIS

Two gifts from Earl Willson Bemis, retired engineer of Worcester, Massachusetts, of $50,000 each to the Astronomical Observatory and the Gray Herbarium was announced yesterday by Henry L. Shattuck '01, treasurer of Harvard College.

The money given to the Astronomical Observatory, known as the Elizabeth E. Bemis Fund, will be used in aiding the survey which is being made of the heavens out to the distance of one hundred million light years under the supervision of Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy and director of the Observatory. This task is being carried on at the South African Observatory and the Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, and was started more than ten years ago.

The gift to the Gray Herbarium, called the Elizabeth Stone Fund, comes as a supplement to an endowment of $100,000 made by Mr. Bemis last year. It will be used in forwarding the work being done in collecting specimens of flowering plants, ferns, and fern-allies at the Herbarium under the direction of Benjamin L. Robinson '87, Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany and curator of the Herbarium.

Mr. Bemis graduated from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1837 and has served as an engineer in several cities since that time.