facade as fine as can be devised, with a great heater and other public halls. Back of this but part of it would be the real university buildings, capable of enlargement to the side and up and down. The lecture rooms and laboratories would be on the unit plan so that partitions could be readily taken out or put in. The library would be in the center, with its seminar rooms extending towards the different departments. Catacombs could be dug as more room was needed for the storage of books, and stories could be' added as the library and the university became larger.
The Harper Memorial Library, as shown in the illustrations, does to a certain extent follow this plan. It is to be surrounded by the halls for languages, philosophy and history. But the sciences with their department libraries are separated, and the whole university is scattered over a large area. Students must find hats and coats and travel from building to building to attend a lecture or to consult a book. The historic conditions of universities such as Harvard and Yale may make necessary their extension over an ever-wider territory, but it seems a pity that when universities must erect their buildings from the start, as has been necessary for Columbia and Chicago, there is not at hand sufficient artistic and educational imagination to plan a building that is beautiful because it best serves the purposes of a university.
AGRICULTURAL GRAPHICS
The Department of Agriculture has issued a bulletin, compiled by Mr. Middleton Smith, of the Bureau of Statistics, which contains eighty-eight maps I showing graphically the production of crops and farm animals by the states and by the principal countries of the world. Several of these charts are here reproduced. The appeal made to the eye by graphic representation adds to the vividness and permanence of the impression, and such charts have considerable interest and educational value.
The agricultural products of this country are indeed so large that assistance
AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MR. ALEXANDER AGASSIZ
