Arizona republican., 1913-02-23

Chamber of Commerce received mo- | tification of the acceptance of it's offer. Immediately the officer set | out to carry out their agreement l Script was purchased for the pur- pose of securing title to the labora- | tory site of forty acres; 160 acres in the mountains south of Tucson Were purchased at a tax sale and turned over to the Carnegie institu- ton; lease on 320 acres, being half of a school section was taken from the county and the University of Arizona selected 320 acres. These were leased to the Carnegie institu- tion. In six months the road had been built, the pipe line constructed and telephone and telegraph lines extended to the laboratory site where work on a large and substantial bui' i'ding was being pushed under the direction of Dr MDougall who had been appointed head of the bOtani- cal department of the Carnegie in stitution. The citizens of Tucson readily subscribed about $S,0OO to pay the cost of the land and the i improvements guaranteed by the Chamber of Commerce.
 The Consolidate Telephone and | Telegraph company which at the ! time owned the telephone system in | Tucson refused to make any contrib ution to the fund and asked what l the directors of the Chamber of Com 1 merce considered an eXhorbtant price ] for building the line to the labora- i tory At that time the service in | Tucson was very poor and the drec-
 
 were so incensed at the action of the telephone company that they decid- ed to organize a home company. At that time General L. H. Manning, ! Albert Steinfeld. N E. Plumer. B l.. l Worthen, Charles H. Bayless and 1 Fred Fleishman, all substantial busi-
 ness men of Tucson and fully able to promote successfully a home com | pany were directors of the chamber. 1 They organized the Home Telephone ! company of Tucson and filed their
 articles of incorporation. The next day they received d telegram from 1 the home offices of the Consolidated l Telephone company in California that | a representative of that corporation
 was hastening to Tucson to confer 1 with them. The upshOt of the mat 1 ter was that the Consolidated Tele- | phone company built the line to the ! laboratory without cost to Tucson | and guaranteed to furnish telephone | service free for all time to the in i stitution. The Home Telephone com i pany was promptly abandoned.
 @Under the direction of Dr. w. A. Cannon who became the head of the
 desert botanical laboratory, the work | of the institution was started. In a | few words it may be described as | the study of the life history of de- l sert flora" and while it is purely 1 scientific the utility features are not l by any means ignored. It might be l said here that Professor Burbank re-
 ceived a number of grants from the Carnegie institution. More varieties of plant life are found in the desert i than in any other region and from l the start. the laboratory made. many discoveries which proved of great in 1 terest to the scientific world. The
 reports of the laboratory have gone l all over the civilized world and at | tracted many visitors to the insttu ] tion. The Plant World" d monthly i magazine was established. The large
 universities began to make grants to | the professors to pursue botanical
 work al the laboratory and the corps
 of the institution was increased by
 the Carnegie foundation.
 An addition to the laboratory build
 ing had to be constructed MT. Me
 DougaI head of the botanical depart
 ment of the Carnegie Institution
 wired from New York to Tucson to
 make his headquarters at the labora-
 tory. Expeditions into northern Mex
 leo were arranged, stations were . established at various elevations in
 the Santa Catalina mountains and
 along the Salton sea in California. A
 brnch of the laboratory was establish
 ed at Carmel, Cal.
 For several years the staff of the
 laboratory has been making a com
 pirative study of the flora of the
 deserts of the world which will cover
 a period of ten years. First, the flora of the American desert was
 studied Dr. w A. Cannon director
 of the laboratory recently returned
 from a year spent in studying the
 desert flora of the Sahara. He went
 as far south as KhartOum on the , l Nile and made side trips from thN
 main line of travel into the deserts
 of Egypt using a motorcycle. Later
 scientific parties will be sent on eX petitions into the deserts of Asa - i Australia and South America.
 ! At tines more than thirty scientists ! are working at the desert laborator! ] and the Carnegie Institution now spends more than $50,000 annually or ] the Arizona institution. It is nov { proposed to build a hall of chemistr, and an administration building I'm ! forty acre site on which the labora ! tory is located is too small and to- rough for this purpose while the l6 acres to the south is rugged anC ! mountainous.
 <I On the west lies a smooth tract o { 32O acres of school land under lease $I On this it is proposed to erect tn ! projected buildings and extension ] in the future if title can be secure ! from the state. The laboratory ha { acquired lands in the valley for ex ! perimental purposes but these ar too far distant to- be used for build ing purposes. On these lands a neV { pumping plant has been installed an