used in the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts was that provided by action of the Regents in March, 1856: "Resolved, That Professors Sager and Winchell be a committee to contract for the construction of such a microscope with accessories as they may deem the interests of the University demand" (R.P., 1837-64, p. 640). This instrument cost $450; later, a two-inch objective costing $19 was added to it.
In 1858 a most important addition to the teaching material was made by the acquisition of the Trowbridge collection. The Catalogue of that year says:
As was stated in connection with the curriculum, there was at that time also a "complete suite of Birds which visit Michigan," and a collection of two thousand species of snails; and the one microscope owned constituted "means unsurpassed for microscopical observations."… The Trowbridge Collection … is an extensive series of specimens in all the classes of the Animal Kingdom, made by Lieut. Trowbridge (late Professor in the University) upon the Pacific coast of our country; it furnishes a complete illustration of the Fauna of that coast, and will raise the University collection to a rank among the very first in the country.
Cat.
An oven "to protect the Zoological Specimens" was provided in 1861 at a cost of $15, and by 1867 the department had "a very large Zoological Collection … The whole number of entries in the Zoological Cabinet [was] over 6,300, and the whole number of specimens not less than 16,000." Important additions to the collections were made by Steere on his five-year tour of the world in the early seventies and were mentioned in the Calendar of 1875-76: "The Steere Zoological Collection, comprising about 25,000 insects, 1,500 shells, 8,000 birds, and numerous representatives of other groups; total, about 10,000 entries and 60,000 specimens." Steere also brought numerous botanical and mineral specimens.
Just when additional microscopes were purchased is uncertain, but in 1875 it was said: "The Microscopical Laboratory is now so well supplied with instruments that it can respond to any moderate demand" (Cal., 1875-76, p. 73). There were instruments for making slides, for drawing and measuring with the microscope, for "microchemical work and other methods of observation," and for physiological studies. Furniture, skeletons, and dissection materials were being acquired annually, and from this time on there was a continuous but uneven growth of the equipment for zoological work. But the acquisitions were crude, judged according to present standards. The microscopes purchased even as late as 1885 were, as described by Professor Reighard, "simple in type with no fine adjustment, no condenser, no nose-piece; provided only with the two objectives and two oculars."
The building which first housed the Department of Zoology was, so far as the oldest records show, Mason Hall, which for some years after 1848 was called North College (see Part VIII: First Buildings) . Winchell's lecture room, according to Edward Laurens Mark ('71, LL.D. '96), was on the first floor between the two corridors, and other near-by rooms were used for storage. During the greater part of Steere's incumbency the room above this lecture room and the first floor at the north end were museum space, and the southeast corner of the first floor was also occupied by the Department of Zoology. A little later the three main rooms of the department were: (1) a combined lecture room and laboratory, about forty feet square, used largely for identification of species, (2) a smaller room of similar function, about twenty by twenty-five feet, and (3) a third-floor room of about twenty by forty feet. Kitchen tables of oak and
