Albion College - Albionian Yearbook (Albion, MI)

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14 ALBION COLLEGE by members of the Faculty for reference work and collateral read- ing. One hundred twenty periodicals are regularly received. Bound volumes of the leading magazines are made available by the use of Poole ' s Index and its supplements and the Reader ' s Guide to Periodical Literature. The Dewey system of classification is used and a card catalogue makes the books easily accessible. Free access to the stack-room is allowed, and in addition to their use in the Library building, books, with some restrictions, may be drawn for home use. The Library is open on school days from 8 a. m. to 12 m. ; from 1 :30 p. m. to 5 :30 p. m., and on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30; Saturday from 8 a. m. to 12 m. Departmental Libraries are also maintained in the Chemical, Biological and Physical Laboratories and in the Astronomical Observatory. ASTRONOMICAL EQUIPMENT. In Astronomy, the facilities offered by the College are ex- cellent. The equipment is fully adequate for purposes of instruction or research. The Equatorial Telescope is of eight inches clear aperture, made and mounted by Alvan Clark Sons. It is pro- vided with circles, coarse and fine, driving clock, filar micrometer, with field and side illumination, and eye pieces giving range from a low-power comet-seeker to eight hundred diameters. The Transit Circle, by Fauth Co., is of a four-inch aperture and is provided with micrometers in right ascension and declination, levels, sensitive to one second of arc and vertical circles reading to single seconds by micrometer microscopes. The Sidereal Clock and Chronograph are by the same makers. All of the instruments are in electrical connection. BIOLOGICAL EQUIPMENT. The Biological Department occupies the new Biological Labora- tory, erected as an addition to Robinson Hall. This addition is 45 by 60 feet, three stories high, above the basement. It contains large laboratories for the classes in Zoology and Botany, accommodating respectively 60 and 40 students. Besides the large windows at the end of each table there are electric lights and gas arc lights that afford ample illumination for evenings or dark days. There are commodious lecture rooms adjoining each. Besides these labora- tories there are smaller laboratories for more advanced classes,

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COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS The purpose of the founders, as expressed in the charter and adhered to in all subsequent amendments, was to establish and maintain a College of Liberal Arts. This is the character of the school today. It is not a theological school. It aims to educate young men and women for the business of life, bearing ever in mind that no education is complete or genuine that neglects the factors of moral and spiritual worth. Albion College is distinc- tively a Christian school. It imposes no theological tests and no religious exactions beyond regular attendance on the daily chapel exercises and at the church of the students ' choice on Sunday. While Albion College demands true scholarship first, last and all the time, she consistently teaches that higher life that is above text-books and laboratory classes and that manifests itself in use- fulness to society as well as to the individual who possesses it. She holds a high ideal of service, and few students leave her halls without this impress deep-seated in their characters. LIBRARIES, LABORATORIES AND OBSERVATORY LIBRARIES. The Library Building, the gift of the late Mrs. Charlotte T. Gassette, of Albion, Michigan, is a substantial new brick structure, well equipped, containing 21,600 volumes, besides about 4,000 un- bound volumes and pamphlets. The Reading Room, commodious and attractive, is abundantly supplied with encyclopedias, dictionaries, lexicons, and general works of reference, together with such books as are temporarily assigned

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YEAR BOOK 1 with the Mime lighting arrangements at in the larger laboratories, as described above. Store rooms and supply rooms, with a large room for a working Botanical Museum occupy the remainder of the space on the lower three floors. On the upper floor are rooms for Museum workshops, with a suite of three rooms which are fully equipped for photographic purposes. The Biological Department is well supplied with such appara- tus as is needed for its work, including over sixty compound micro- scopes, dissecting microscopes, rocking, sliding and rotary micro- tomes, incubator, aquaria, embedding apparatus and a collection of several thousand mounted slides. The Botanical Working Museum is especially designed to contribute to the work in Ecology. It already contains over fifteen hundred species in the herbarium nearly twelve hundred of which are representative of this locality, and many of them represented in numerous specimens which show the plant in immature and winter condition, as well as in flower, etc. There is also a large number of specimens of seeds, woods, barks, fibers, medicinal and commercial products. It is designed to make this collection as completely representative of local plant life and plant products as possible. The Zoological Lecture Room is so arranged as to be speedily darkened and is provided with a stereopticon ; and while there is an ample supply of lantern slides on hand for purposes of instruc- tion, others are being added as occasion demands. The photo- graphic equipment of the laboratory is such as to highly facilitate the rapid increase of this collection. All the laboratories have individual private lockers, each with its own combination lock, and water and gas connections are liberally provided throughout. The supply of material for study and dissection is large and is ample in amount and range of species for both elementary and advanced study. It is constantly enriched through purchase as well as by the collections made by the department and friends of the college. The study and private laboratory oi the professor in charge is on the first floor, adjacent to the Zoological Laboratory, where he may be consulted at any time by those having need of his assistance. PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT. The laboratory work in the department of Physics has b«en greatly strengthened during the past few years by the acquisition of a considerable amount of modern physical apparatus. Among