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3.
A plan something like this has suggested itself to me: increase the botany of the Scientific Course to, say, 3 times 5 days per week. Also the Chemistry or Zoology; and have as well a course of 1 term with a choice to the students of the long course [sic.] or the short course [sic.] – those electing the short course of the 1 term must take the long course of 3 terms in Chemistry or Zoology, whichever study runs with botany & vice versa. This plan will I believe relieve us of a serious trouble which I see in the future viz too large classes to handle in a laboratory. By arrangement with Professor Dodge I had 2 days per week of Sub fresh. botany last fall & there were 65 students in two sections each section 2 hrs per day. As a pointer let me say that our
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Subfreshman Class numbered 106 & 65 represented that number in the Scientific Course leaving 41 for the other two courses. I can positively assure you there is work ahead if you come here: the State runs largely to Scientific lines of study.
Now if you will give some suggestions as to the arrangement of botany in our courses of study & can slyly slip up here for a call I shall be heartily glad.
Sincerely yours C. W. Hall
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My dear Professor:
I have not time today to say [?] a fraction of what my heart prompts me to say at the glare of light that has been let in on my situation.
The accompanying query looks formal: I have not forgotten that I quite recently wrote to you to which I may get a reply any mails.
I hope you will come to take up the work with us and help us put up the new Science building in which the dept of botany is to be generously dealt with we want your experience in the planning [of?] the building as well as in the filling.
If there are any questions you may want to ask before sending a reply to the accompanying question I shall be glad to answer so far as I can.
C. W. H.
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Confidential
[The University of M]innesota Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 2d 1886.
My dear Professor
President Northrop [sic.] in a short conversation this afternoon desired me to ask you this question:
Would you accept the professorship of Botany in this institution and the charge of the botanical survey of the State at a salary of $2500 per year?
The President stated that he had quite recently received strong encouragement that the regents would create and fill such a professorship in the near future. Before, however, the chair is t[?]d to anyone in a formal way the board desires to know if there be at least a probability that it will be accepted. I recall very well your assurances of a year or so ago & this question is to learn whether you are still favorably disposed towards the change you this summer inclined to make.
Sincerely yours C. W. Hall
Professor Charles E. Bessey Lincoln Neb.
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The University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sept 29th 1886.
Dear Professor Bessey
My eye has just caught a statement in your Botany p. 234 b to this effect: [sic.] "it is only from the middle to near the end of spring that they [the species [?] and [Spirogyra?]] can be found in conjugation".
Spirogyra longata (probably that) is now found for my botany class in a stone quarry on the river side of our campus in all the stages of conjugation. Indeed I have never found in any season before such perfect specimens as we have been examining for the last two days.
Some, to me, quite rare forms of Miss Butlers [?] the desmids also occur here.
Sincerely yours C. W. Hall