THE BIOLOGICAL STATION
IN the spring of the year 1900 Professor Jacob E. Reighard of the Department of Zoology appeared before the Board of Regents to discuss the establishment of a biological station on the Great Lakes, to be under University control but maintained by the government. The Regents then asked President Angell to take the matter up with Senator James McMillan in the hope of obtaining favorable action by the government. Apparently the project came to naught. The idea was not entirely abandoned by the University, however, for in October, 1903, Professor John O. Reed included in his plan for the betterment of the Summer Session a suggestion that a biological station be established at some suitable place on the lakes of Michigan, "for the study of Botany and Zoölogy and for accommodation of persons desiring to do advanced work in those lines" (R.P., 1901-6, p. 270). But again no immediate action resulted.
Authorization of the establishment of a biological station was finally secured and was recorded thus in the minutes of the Board of Regents for April 28, 1909:
On motion of Regent Carey it was voted that a teaching or research station in Botany and Zoology at a total appropriation for equipment, salaries and other expense for 1909 not to exceed $2,000, should be established at the Bogardus Engineering Camp,* 1.1 provided at least twenty students should elect the course for the coming Summer Session.
R.P.
During the summer of 1908 the University had acquired a tract of land of nearly fourteen hundred acres, on the south and east shores of Douglas Lake, Cheboygan County, partly by purchase and partly by gift from Charles and Hannah W. Bogardus, of Pellston (R.P., 1906-10, pp. 274-75, 348). According to Reighard, Colonel Bogardus and his wife had expressed the wish that scientific work be done on the site:
With that remark, the biological station was conceived. Dean Cooley wanted still more land and thought that the founding of a biological station might lead Colonel and Mrs. Bogardus to offer it on the same favorable terms as before. He took the matter to the
