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appointed, and a valuable collection of architectural periodicals, drawings, and photographs has been made.

During this same year the course in astronomy was considerably extended. Mr. John Krom Rees, A. M., E. M., was appointed director of the observatory and professor of geodesy and practical astronomy. Very valuable instruction in the use of the instruments has been added since the completion of the new observatory.

A new library building was completed and occupied in 1883, at a cost of $400,000. It was situated on Forty-ninth street about the middle of the block, and was the most imposing feature of the beautiful group. On the first floor were arranged two commodious lecture rooms, with the necessary studies and offices for the law school. The remainder of the building was devoted to the library, and the whole surmounted by an astronomical observatory.

The new observatory contained a set of portable astronomical instruments, a 46-inch transit, by Troughton & Simms; a combined transit and zenith instrument for time and latitude determinations; an equatorially mounted refractor of 5 inches aperture, to which was attached a spectroscope with the dispersive power of 12 flint-glass prisms of 55 degrees, by Alvin Clark; also a diffraction spectroscope with grating by L. M. Rutherfurd, esq. A set of comparison apparatus, with electrodes, Plücher's tubes, coils, etc., accompanied the spectroscope. Several valuable additions have lately been made to the observatory equipment.

REMOVAL OF THE LAW SCHOOL.

In 1883 the law school was moved to new quarters on the college block. It had been feared that removal to such a distance from the city courts would cripple the usefulness of the school, but this fear has proved groundless. The school has increased steadily in numbers and efficiency. There have been established three prize tutorships of the annual value of $500 each. The first of these was awarded in 1883, and one has been awarded each year since, thus supplying the school with three fellow assistants.

At the time of President Barnard's death the number of students in this school had reached 477, and on the 7th of May, 1888, the following important resolution was passed by the trustees:

Resolved, That from the commencement of the scholastic year of 1888-89 the degree of bachelor of laws shall be conferred only upon students, hereafter matriculating for the first time, who shall have pursued a three-years' course.

Several times propositions had been made to confer upon graduates of the law school the higher degree of master of laws. Various plans were suggested for requiring one or two years of additional study or for conferring it only on bachelors of law who were already bachelors of arts. It was, however, very forcibly argued by President Barnard that the bachelor's degree was too easily obtainable, and that the offering of a higher degree would only increase an already existing evil.

For a number of years no examinations were required for entrance to the law school, and even after their introduction they remained very insignificant, the result being, as President Barnard said, that numbers of men going through the law school without proper preliminary training "go to swell the already great and constantly growing number of uneducated lawyers." It should be the object of a great university not so much to make "lawyers" as to make men "learned in the law."

Two new professorships were created and able men were elected to do the additional work.

THE LIBRARY.

The university library, which was directly over the law school, was so situated as to be easy of access from any portion of the college. Approaching from either side by a flight of stone steps one entered a rectangular room 36 by 50 feet, flanked by stacks for books and broken in height by two tiers of galleries. This room contained the loan desk and " opens into the reading room by means of a pointed arch so wide and lofty that the two form indeed but a single great apartment, the arch coming toward the end of one of the longer sides of the reading room. This is lighted by large windows above, and small ones, rather widely spaced, below, thus affording the best illumination while avoiding the shut up feeling that comes when all the openings are above the level of the eye. The ceiling is a barrel vault supported on either side by a semivault of similar section. The finish here as in other parts of the building is of brick slightly glazed as to surface. The color is pale yellow diversified by bands of dull red, applied in no strictly symmetrical way but with a skill which at once emphasizes dimensions and gives a desirable accent of freedom and variety."

The arch was the important feature of the room.

* * *

Its beauty of form and great size (34 by 36 feet) give dignity and distinction to the whole composition, and turns what might have been a merely excellent into an extremely imposing apartment.1

The completion of this room made possible what had for many years been desired, namely, the uniting of the libraries of the different schools. The duty of arranging and cataloguing the 50,000 volumes, which up to this time had been scattered in nine different rooms, was intrusted to Mr. Melvil Dewey, of the Boston Library Bureau. The books were minutely classified and placed on shelves, to which the students had immediate access, and the library was open from 8.30 a. m. until 10 p. m. every day in the year except Sunday, Good Friday, Independence day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. These privileges, extended in but few public libraries, were thoroughly appre

Recent Architecture in America, by M. G. Van Rensselaer, Century Magazine, 1884, p. 67.

The

ciated by the students, and the library is in constant use. number of books has grown until it is considerably over 100,000, and is increasing at the rate of a thousand a month. It is surpassed in numbers by but two university libraries in America. Books are loaned only to officers, students, and alumni, but any respectable person is free to use the library for scholarly purposes. In his inaugural address President Low said:

There is no library in the city, I venture to think there is none in the country, where the student is more welcome, where the facilities granted him are so great. No part of the college system is more liberally supported or more generously dealt with, for it is recognized to be a laboratory of all the departments of the college.

Besides what may be spoken of as the general library, there is a special library of political science, intended to include the most recent and most valuable European and American works, particular attention being given to providing the material needed for original investigation. The department of history and political science alone contains 18,000 volumes.

The law library, of about 10,000 volumes, contains a complete series of the reports and statutes of the United States and of New York; full sets of the reports of nearly all the other States, with statutes and digests; a full series of the English and Irish reports from the yearbooks to the present time, with the English and Irish statutes and digests; the leading treatises on English and American private law; the best editions of the Roman civil law and the leading commentaries on it, both ancient and modern, and the codes, legislative acts, and special treatises on the law of Germany, France, Italy, and other nations, including the South American States. It includes the original law library of William Samuel Johnson, the first president of Columbia College after the Revolution, and one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States; also the law library of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, and is especially rich in international, constitutional, and administrative law.

The library also contains, in pure and applied science, an unusually fine collection of periodicals and serials, including complete sets of nearly all the important English, French, and German journals in chemistry, chemical technology, mining, metallurgy, engineering in its various branches, electric science, photography, public hygiene, pure mathematics, astronomy, geology, botany, and kindred sciences. The number of current periodicals and serials taken is more than 800, and the funds at the disposal of the library for the purchase of books enable the officers of instruction in the various departments to put into the library the latest treatises and monographs on their respective subjects.

Besides the library, the property of the college, the students have also access to the library of the New York Academy of Sciences.

This collection consists of about 6,000 volumes, largely made up of the proceedings of learned societies of America and Europe, and is deposited in the library.

THE HERBARIA.

The president's report for 1869 contains a description of the herbarium, as it existed at that time, written by Dr. Torrey, by whom the larger portion of it was presented to the college:

The collection is peculiarly rich in what are called type specimens, being the identical plants named by the authors who have described or noticed them in their published works. The college herbarium is the standard for many works on North American botany, such as The Flora of the Northern and Middle States; The Flora of North America, by Torrey and Gray: The Flora of the State of New York; nearly all of Dr. Gray's works and those of Engelmann, Sullivant, Tuckerman, Chapman, and many others.

The botanical collections of nearly all the United States Pacific railroad surveys were made the subject of special reports, which were published by order of Congress; and the type specimens, with few exceptions, are in our herbarium. So are those extensive collections made by the Government botanists in the five or six years occupied in the Mexican boundary survey. Full sets of the plants were reserved for reference. We have also an extensive collection of plants from the United States North Pacific exploring expedition, under Commodores Rodgers and Ringgold, and many from Commodore Perry's Japan expedition.

All the plants obtained by Fremont in his explorations are preserved in the college herbarium. We have nearly every plant described in the valuable botany of the States north of Virginia and west to the Mississippi, by Dr. Gray; and of Dr. Chapman's Southern Flora, identified by the authors themselves.

Of California plants we have very full collections, and in a fine state of preservation. The Rocky Mountains, Utah, and Colorado are well represented by what we have received from most of the explorers of those regions. Indeed we have been so fortunate as to have received sets of plants from nearly all the botanists who have visited or surveyed the remote parts of North America, even beyond the Arctic circle. Many of these were received through the kindness of Sir William Hooker, to whose charge were committed, by the British Government, the various collections made in the Hudson Bay regions to the Pacific coast. His extensive Flora of British America was founded on these collections, and the author of that splendid work shared them liberally with us. We have also many plants from Alaska, some of them received before we purchased that Territory.

The botany of the Southwestern States is well represented in the college herbarium.

Of foreign plants we have vast numbers, embracing almost a complete flora of Europe, named by distinguished botanists, with a good number from Africa, especially those of the Cape of Good Hope, many of them types of what are described in the Cape Flora of Harvey and Sonder, recently published by the British Government.

In East India botany we are rich, having received liberally of the plants collected under the auspices of the British Government. China has furnished us with many rare species, and we have lately been very largely supplied with choice Japan plants from the botanists of the Imperial botanic garden of St. Petersburg. A special interest is felt in the botany of Japan, since it has been shown that its flora is so nearly related to that of North America, and the specimens received from St. Petersburg are all originals of a late flora of Japan.1

1 Report of President Barnard to the trustees, 1869.

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