NOTES AND COMMENT 



The publication of Botanical Abstracts has already advanced to a 

 point that makes it one of the indispensable tools of the working bot- 

 anist. There has perhaps never before been a project in the history of 

 our science which has at the very outset elicited such a large amount of 

 gratuitious cooperation. Nearly 3000 titles will have been abstracted 

 in the first two volumes, and it is estimated that between 5000 and 6000 

 entries will appear in the volumes for 1920. The excellent and thor- 

 oughgoing plan by which practically all of the world's periodicals con- 

 taining botanical matter have been assigned to collaborating abstractors 

 gives assurance that the future volumes of Botanical Abstracts will very 

 thoroughly cover the field of pure and applied botany. The journal now 

 has about 1000 subscribers, and it is worthy of note that over one third 

 of this number are outside the United States and Canada. The un- 

 hampered growth of this valuable publication will depend on securing 

 a still larger subscription list, and it is to be hoped that the same spirit 

 of cooperation that has filled its pages will actuate every American bot- 

 anist to do all he can to increase its circulation. 



There is probably no case in which American horticulture has been 

 more dependent on foreign importations than in the matter of securing 

 bulbs of the tulip, hyacinth and narcissus. The popularity of these 

 plants is attested by the fact that nearly two million dollar's worth were 

 sold annually in the period prior to the war, of which number only 

 twenty-five thousand dollar's worth were produced in America. Dr. 

 David Griffiths and Mr. H. E. Juenemann have recently written a bul- 

 letin (Department of Agriculture Bull. 797) describing the methods 

 of growing and handling these plants and indicating the extent to 

 which their production may be increased in the United States. The 

 bulk of our crop is grown on the north Atlantic seaboard and in the 

 extreme northwest. The authors show that the cultivation may be 

 extended to the Ohio and upper Mississippi valleys and that the selec- 

 tion of proper varieties will make it possible for us to produce our own 

 "Dutch bulbs" over an even greater area. 



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