72 Rhodora [APRIL 
have not the data by which to determine the exact limits of distri- 
bution on Cape Cod, for instance, of Lespedeza angustifolia or Panicum 
oricola; in the Housatonic Valley of Salix serissima or Carex Crawei; 
in the White Mountains of Osmorhiza divaricata or Lycopodium 
sitchense; or in eastern Maine of Montia lamprosperma or Comandra 
livida. 
Every member of the New England Botanical Club who has aided 
in the preparation even of Check Lists by states, and all who have 
taken part in the more detailed work of the Committee on Local 
Flora realize how lamentably inadequate is the available material in 
both public and private herbaria; and all of us are cognizant of the 
constant and too often fruitless appeals from our corps of untiring 
workers for more data and specimens and for any information what- 
ever from certain regions. 
At the last accounting, May 31, 1911, the organized part of the 
Club Herbarium comprised, besides an encouraging start in Algae, 
Lichens, Mosses and Hepatics, 43,403 sheets of vascular plants. 
This figure at first appears large and it might seem that a collection 
of such proportions is ample for our needs. In fact we might be 
pardoned for congratulating ourselves upon the vastness of our 
possessions: the herbarium of the Middlesex Institute, the herbarium 
of the Metropolitan Park Commission, the private herbarium of the 
late Herbert A. Young, the Maine collections of F. Lamson Scribner, 
Elmer D. Merrill, Fred P. Briggs, Miss Kate Furbish and M. L. 
Fernald; the Berkshire County collections of Ralph Hoffmann, the 
Marthas Vineyard herbarium of Sidney Harris, and innumerable 
other collections, including the invaluable New England herbarium 
of Bryophytes and Lichens of Charles E. Faxon. But valuable as 
the Club Herbarium has already become, an analysis of its components 
shows that our present collections are merely a nucleus, about 8 97, 
in fact, of the material required for an adequate representation of the 
plants of the six New England states. 
In the following analysis of the situation column A gives by states 
the number of mounted sheets of vascular plants in the herbarium 
on May 31, 1911; column B, the areas of the states; column C, the 
number of species and varieties of flowering plants and ferns known in 
each state; column D, the approximate number of species generally 
distributed in the state; column E, the approximate number of species 
of local occurrence in the state; column F, the approximate number 
of species in each area of 100 square miles; and column G, the approxi- 
