. . EDITORIAL . . . 



The fourth annual meeting of the Vermont Botanical Club was 

 held at Burlington, on January 27 and 28. The membership in the 

 Club is now nearly one hundred, which shows strongly the measure 

 of activity among Vermont botanists. The programme listed more 

 than twenty papers, on a great variety of subjects, both popular and 

 technical. Several of the more popular papers will be published in 

 The Plant World. 



* * 



* 



The Hon. J. Sterling Morton, late Secretary of Agriculture, has 

 published a protest against the cutting of Christmas trees. According 

 to him something like 20,000,000 trees are annually sacrificed for this 

 custom. The trees selected are never the small, unshapely trees, the 

 cutting of which might benefit those remaining, but the young, sym- 

 metrical, vigorous trees that give promise of future value. The dis- 

 continuance of this custom m.ight seem a hardship to the children, 

 who look forward to the gaily decorated tree almost as much as to the 

 accompanying gifts, but really is it not a poor way to inculcate that 

 respect and love for trees we would like to see actuating the rising 

 generation? 



* * 

 * 



Wk recently received the first number of the new botanical jour- 

 nal, Rliodora, Journal of the New England Botanical Club. It is an 

 attractive, well printed journal of twenty pages, and is under the 

 editorship of Dr. B. L. Robinson of the Gray Herbarium, assisted by 

 F. S. Collins, M. L. Fernald and HolHs Webster. It has been 

 founded, we are told in the editorial announcement, for the purpose 

 of giving new stimulus and aid to the study of the local New Eng- 

 land flora. " In the selection of subject matter, special attention will 

 be given to such plants as are newly recognized or imperfectly known 

 within our limits, to the more precise determination of plant ranges, 

 to brief revisions of groups in which specific and varietal limits re- 

 quire further definition, to corrections upon current manuals and 

 local floras, to altitudinal distribution, plant associations, and ecologi- 

 cal problems." The first number contains a technical revision of the 

 Rattlesnake Plantains of New England, a description of a new Wild 

 Lettuce from Massachusetts, the description of two species of Algse 

 new to North America, notes on a number of fleshy fungi found near 

 Boston, and a number of short items. We wish the new journal 

 every success in its chosen field. 



