Notes and Comment. 305 



NOTES AND COMMENT. 



Reviewing, in Science, a recent work on "Concealing-colors," 

 Lewis Agassiz Fuertes says: "If the reader be himself open- 

 minded and, fired by the novelty of the discoveries, try for him- 

 self the experiments so graphically described, he will be led 

 irresistably to a sympathy with the enlightened authors, and 

 there will open to him a whole new realm of discovery — 

 he will , in short, be led back to the delightful field of philosophic 

 and contemplative natural history, which, in these days of 

 minute and technical study of classification and relationships, 

 has been nearly if not quite lost sight of." Such an example 

 of intelligent and sympathetic reviewing is a source of great 

 satisfaction In the present case one is reminded of the brilliant 

 teaching of Tvndall, who, in earlier days, exhorted his students 

 to "do the thing" and they would then know more than he had 

 told them. 



It is significant that in his presidential address on "The 

 Flora of the British Islands," before the botanical section of the 

 British Association for the Advancenent of Science, Professor 

 J. W. H. Trail took occasion to say " I believe that a well-organ- 

 ized botanical survey of the British Islands would give results 

 of great scientific value, and that there is need for it " This is 

 the ground over which Hooker, Benthan, and a host of other 

 lights at Kew, South Kensington, Canbridge, Edinburgh, and 

 other centers too numerous to mention, have tried for several 

 generations, with no s nail success, to learn about British plants. 

 It mas well be doubted whether there are any areas in the 

 United States upon which a thorough-going botanical survey 

 would not produce results of great scientific value. 



The popular journals that are published for horticulturists 

 and lovers of rural life are teeming in these days with all sorts 

 of botanical information, some of it strange, if true, but much 

 of it well worth at least the trouble of looking over. In turning 

 through a pile of these journals, not long since, the reviewer 

 was struck with the interest of some of the articles, one of which, 

 credited to its proper source, appears in the present number of 

 The Plant World. 



