....hmm sorry "sometimes after several experiments" my graphic.device (W2000/1.6.1)didn't popUp & only a new start helps, but now it works :-) # hermes is data.frame apply(hermes,2,hist) #without names sapply((1:ncol(hermes)),function(x) hist(hermes[,x],main=names(hermes)[x])) #with col.names thanks & regards,christian