1905] Manual of the Trees of North America 139 
into Southern New England. My specimens have been verified at 
the Gray Herbarium. — R. W. Woopwarp, New Haven, Connecti- 
cut. 
SARGENT’S MANUAL OF THE TREES OF NORTH AMERICA. — Any 
one who has consulted Professor Sargent's Silva of North America, 
or who has had to make shelfroom for it, need not be told of the 
author’s large way of looking at things and of doing things. Over 
its countless folio pages are spread the details of “the information 
concerning the trees of North America which has been gathered 
at the Arnold Arboretum," — that storehouse and headquarters of 
knowledge of the trees of the world. 
Realizing the comparative inaccessibility of the fourteen folio vol- 
umes to students of our trees, Professor Sargent has recently put 
forth a manual! in which, as his preface declares, he has tried to 
bring this information into convenient form. Students everywhere 
must be grateful for this attempt, but yet their gratitude will not 
be unmixed with disappointment and dismay. For the manual is 
as large as many dictionaries, — as big, at least, as a “Webster's 
Abridged," and its price is — to say the least — inconsiderately high. 
Compared in size and price with the Silva, the manual is, to be sure, 
Lilliputian, if we may use this term somewhat in a Brobdingnagian 
sense, 
In its rising eight hundred pages there is condensed an enormous 
amount of information, but at first sight, as compared with the Silva, 
the condensation seems to be due rather to a shrinkage of the pages 
and of the type than to any sacrifice of words. Of these there is a 
plenty. Merely the diagnosis of the genus Crataegus, for instance, 
takes between five and six hundred words. Asa Gray in his manual 
did it in forty-seven, though we must admit that much additional in- 
formation in regard to this genus has been collected since Gray’s 
time. 
Some of the space needed for this over-conscientious completeness 
is gained by what to the ordinary student is a deplorable omission. 
! Manual of the Trees of North America (exclusive of Mexico), by Charles 
Sprague Sargent, with illustrations by Charles Edward Faxon. Boston and New 
York, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905, pp. 826. Price $6.00 net. 
