turned with valuable material from Trinidad and Jamaica. Mr. George V. Nash, who was promoted from the position of curator of the plantations to the place of head gardener, spent February and March at the Royal Gardens, Kew, by special invitation, for the purpose of selecting from the duplicates of the immense collections of living plants. About two thousand species were secured, the greater number of which promise to thrive, and form the most valuable single addition yet made to the flora of the Garden. Mr. Percy Wilson, museum aid, was sent with the Amherst Astronomical Expedition to Sumatra in March and will spend about six months in that region securing specimens for the economic museum and living plants for the horticultural houses. Other explorations are projected for the present season.
A set of propagating houses was erected at a cost of $16,000 in the latter part of 1900, some new road and pathways built to it, and other ground improvements made. The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad has completed a station on the margin of the grounds, which enhances the beauty of one of the principal approaches to the Museum. Contracts aggregating nearly $200,000 have been let for the present season, embracing the completion of the main horticultural houses, main approaches and grounds in front of the Museum, fountains, roadways and areas round and near both buildings. The income of the Garden from all sources amounts to over $75,000 for 1901. The library was increased by over fifteen hundred volumes and a large number of separates during the year 1900. The herbarium received additions amounting to about seventy thousand specimens, inclusive of the Morong Herbarium of Barnard College, which is deposited under the same conditions as that of Columbia College. Dr. T. F. Allen, the noted socialist on the Characeæ, has recently given his collection of that group to the Garden without reserve, and it is now in process of arrangement under Dr. Allen's supervision. The economic museums have been filled out in many important particulars, but remain in a skeleton state, as a number of years will be necessary to make an adequate representation of many of the subjects taken up. The exhibition microscopes installed a year ago have been objects of great interest and profit to visitors.
The laboratories have accommodated twenty-eight investigators during the year, and the results of some of their researches have been published as contributions, or are being offered as theses, by candidates for degrees at various universities. These investigations extend over the entire range of botany. The equipment has been steadily increased to meet the varied needs of these workers, and the experimental greenhouses afford valuable supplemental facilities in such work. In addition to these original researches. Dr. N. L. Britton has finished a 'Manual of the Plants of Eastern United States,' which is being published by the Henry Holt Company, and Dr. D. T. MacDougal has written an advanced text-book of 'Practical Plant Physiology,' published by Longmans, Green & Co. Seventeen popular lectures were given in the lecture hall of the Museum in the winter of 1900-1901, which were attended by one to five hundred people. The annual meeting of the Horticultural Society of New York was held at the Garden, May 8 and 9, 1901, and the exhibition was notably successful.
THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY.
In the Electrical World and Engineer for January 5, 1901, the first number of the twentieth century, appeared a series of articles on the past progress of applied electricity and upon its prospects for the future. Among the authors are some of the most prominent of American electricians, such as Elihu Thomson, A. E. Kennelly, Louis Bell, Kempster B. Miller, Carl Hering, H. Ward Leonard, Patrick B. Delany, and some of the
