y one Baron Lederer which consisted of 2,600 specimens,
purchased in January, 1838, for $4,000. In July of the same year, Dr.
Asa Gray was made a Professor of Botany and Zooelogy, the first
professor to be appointed. He was contemplating a trip to Europe and was
entrusted by the Regents with $5,000 for the purchase of a library. This
charge he performed to the great satisfaction of the Regents, sending
back a collection of 3,700 volumes in all the branches ordinarily taught
at that time, including many books unobtainable in America. This task
ended Professor Gray's connection with Michigan. Practically all his
long and distinguished career was spent as a professor in Harvard
University. Another purchase of this period, probably the first
acquisition for the library, which seems curiously extravagant for the
officers of an "incipient" University, was Audubon's "Birds of America."
At the present time it is worth many times the $970 paid for it then,
but one wonders, in view of the extreme slenderness of the resources of
the University, just what was the idea which led to its purchase. It was
in any case an evidence of the interest of the Board in practical
scientific studies and their sympathy with what was then the progressive
movement in education.

Meanwhile the Regents were making haste slowly in erecting the
University buildings. In accordance with the "grand design" of the
University Act, a New Haven architect was commissioned to prepare what
proved to be, according to Superintendent Pierce, "a truly magnificent
design." The Governor and the Board of Regents approved this plan but
the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with a better sense of
realities, refused his assent. He maintained that a university did not
consist of fine buildings, "but in the number and ability of its
Professors, and in its other appointments, as libraries, cabinets, and
works of art." So this scheme which would have cost five hundred
thousand dollars, or twice the amount of what had at that time been
realized from the University lands, was abandoned, apparently to the
great disappointment of the citizens of Ann Arbor, who showed their
disapproval by a public indignation meeting.

The plan finally adopted had at least the merit of modesty and some
degree of serviceability. It called for the erection of six buildings,
two to serve as dormitories and class rooms and four as professors'
houses, all on the Campus. The first of the dormitories