58 THE PLANT WOELD 



EDITORIAL. 



The methods of obtaining large general collections of plants from 

 new or little known parts of the world appear to have changed greatly 

 within the past few years. Formerly such collections were largeh' 

 obtained by sending a collector with elaborately organized expeditions, 

 such as the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, the Pacific Railroad Sur- 

 veys, the voyage of the Challenger, etc., and even under these conditions 

 botany was usually subordinated to other interests, and the collections, 

 while abundantly interesting and valuable, were often far from com- 

 plete. But within the last decades has come a marked improvement in 

 botanical exploration. Governments, institutions of learning, botanical 

 gardens and other centers of botanical acti\dty, have sent out regularly 

 equipped exploring expeditions charged with the sole purpose of ob- 

 taining a full representation of the plants of the region visited. Thus 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture has sent botanical expeditions to 

 almost all parts of this country. The U. S. National Museum has sent 

 two expeditions to Mexico, with the result of greatly increasing our 

 knowledge of the flora of that country. The Field Columbian Museum 

 has had several expeditions in the West Indies ; the New York Botan- 

 ical Garden has had two expeditions in Porto Rico, two in the Rockj' 

 Mountains, and another has just started for an exploration of Java. In 

 addition to these, various trained private collectors have visited and 

 collected in interesting and comparatively unknown regions, depending 

 upon the sale of sets of their plants for compensation. Among such 

 may be mentioned Pringle and Palmer in Mexico, Heller in the Rockj^ 

 Mountains, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, Clute in Jamaica, Curtiss in Flor- 

 ida, etc. These are hopeful signs, and go to show that botanical activ- 

 ity along systematic lines was never more active than at present. 



Complaint of the non-receipt of our January issue has been made 

 by a number of subscribers. From inquiries which we have since made 

 at the Washington postoffice, it seems probable that an entire package 



