Improvements in Rotch Building.

During the last few months improvements have been completed in the Rotch building which add very largely to its facilities and together with its old equipment make it one of the best mining laboratories in the United States. A gift from J. J. Storrow '85 made possible the entire refitting of the laboratory of metallurgical chemistry. This laboratory now occupies a room in the west wing, sixty feet long and thirty feet wide, provided with forty-eight desks which are equipped in the best manner for the study of metallurgical chemistry.

A new assay laboratory to be known as the "Simpkins Assay Laboratory" has been fitted up in a large room in the new addition on the east side of the building. It is equipped with nine double muffle soft coal furnaces and all apparatus necessary for assaying. It will accommodate a class of fifty men, while the former assay laboratory would not accommodate more than a quarter of that number.

The Simpkins Metallurgical Laboratory is now being equipped. It occupies the remainder of the east wing, and contains roasting and reverberatory furnaces, testing machines and other apparatus. The preparation of samples for analysis will be carried on in this room.

A large room in the northwest corner of the building is to be used for the study of steel, and a complete set of machinery is being installed for the purpose. Six large gas furnaces have been set up by means of which the whole process of reducing and casting can be illustrated. The addition of this laboratory is very important as in the past there has been no means of studying this important branch of metallurgy.

The laboratory of metallography has been moved to the old infirmary building on Holmes Field, a little east of the Rotch building.