78 The Plant World. 



convinced of its superiority to the means now employed in our 

 best universities. 



Botanists and classicists have usually had very little in 

 common as regards either aims or methods, a fact that makes it 

 all the greater pleasure to refer to the notable work of Professor 

 George Hempl, in what may fairly be called one of the higher 

 departments of biological investigation, which is reported by 

 him in part in popular form in the January number of Harper's. 

 With a persistence, ingenuity, and application of wide knowledge 

 rarely equaled bv any of the great lights in the realm of scientific 

 inquiry, the author shows how, step by step, he has deciphered 

 the written records on tablets and seals of ancient Crete, and has 

 thus aiding in presenting a picture of a civilization antedating 

 ^schylus and Euripides more than a thousand years. Work 

 of this kind constitutes a study of origins, comparable in every 

 essential with that accomplished by botanists who have followed 

 up clues and broked records to definite conclusions regarding the 

 early history of species or floras. To classical workers of this 

 kind we send greetings, and gladly welcome them to the good 

 brotherhood of those who are patiently learning the old story of 

 the earth and its Hving things. 



The citrus growers of California, in a recent convention 

 considered the causes of deterioration of orange groves, the 

 "average truth" — not always easy to get at in that golden state 

 — appearing to be that, notwithstanding a great increase of 

 acreage, there has been, with the exception of a single year, no 

 material increase of fruit production during the past decade. 

 As is well known, the navel orange, which is the most important 

 for market, is a highly modified variety, and there is every rea- 

 son to expect that unless it is handled with consummate skill, 

 and under very favorable conditions, it will "run out." Now 

 that the time has come to fully face the problem, orange growers 

 are making earnest inquiry as to the cause, or causes, of decad- 

 ence and are frankly invoking the aid of scientific men to help 

 them out. At the present the most diverse views prevail. 

 "Inherited weakness," lack of affinity between root and scion, 

 deficiencies in the soil, over-production of fruit, and various other, 

 abnormal conditions are cited, but there is no concensus of opin- 



