re partially
endowed. The Chair of Economics in 1903; the Chair of Biblical
History, by Helen Miller Gould, in December, 1900, to be called
after her mother, the Helen Day Gould Professorship; the Chair of
Art, under the name of the Clara Bertram Kimball Professorship
of Art; the Chair of Music, from the Billings estate; the Chair
of Botany, by Mr. H.H. Hunnewell, January, 1901. And in 1908
and 1909, the arrangements with the Boston Normal School of
Gymnastics were completed, by which that school,--with an endowment
of one hundred thousand dollars and a gymnasium erected on the
Wellesley campus through the efforts of Miss Amy Morris Homans,
the director, and Wellesley friends,--became a part of Wellesley
College: the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education.

Among the notable gifts were the Alexandra Garden in the West
Quadrangle, given by an alumna in memory of her little daughter;
the beautiful antique marbles, presented by Miss Hannah Parker
Kimball to the Department of Art, in memory of her brother, M. Day
Kimball; and the Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts and
early editions, given by George A. Plimpton in memory of his wife,
Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, of the class of '84. Of romances
of chivalry, "those poems of adventure, the sources from which
Boiardo and Ariosto borrowed character and episodes for their real
poems," we have, according to Professor Margaret Jackson, their
curator, perhaps the largest collection in this country, and one of
the largest in the world. Many of these books are in rare or
unique editions. Of the editions of 1543, of Boiardo's "Innamorato"
only one other copy is known, that in the Royal Library at Stuttgart.
The 1527 edition of the "Orlando Furioso" was unknown until 1821,
when Count Nilzi described the copy in his collection. Of the
"Gigante Moronte", Wellesley has an absolutely unique copy.
A thirteenth-century commentary on Peter Lombard's "Sentences"
has marginal notes by Tasso, and a contemporary copy of Savonarola's
"Triumph of the Cross" shows on the title page a woodcut of the
frate writing in his cell. Bembo's "Asolini" a first edition,
contains autograph corrections. In 1912, Wellesley had the unusual
opportunity, which she unselfishly embraced, to return to the
National Library at Florence, Italy, a very precious Florentine
manuscript of the fourteenth century, containing the only known
copy of the Sirventes and other important historical verses