THE PLANT WORLD 257 



matter in you magazine whould go to some agricultural paper of horti- 

 culture or Gardiiier' s Magazine. The lessons you have in botany I think 

 have no place in the magazine any one interested in the subject can 

 afford to buy a text-book which will give the information better and the 

 illustrations for a dollar or two. 



* ' I note that of all the magazines published none maintain a column of 

 exchanges. Now in all the ethical magazines there is a page or so set apart 

 for exchanges. In this subscribers can get valuable information. I write 

 this with a friendly feeling and the criticism I offer is the one that I feel 

 and I am in a retail business and I always appreciate my customers and 

 if they will make their wants known I always tried to supply them with 

 their demand and I thought it might be the same in your business, if 

 you knew the subscribers as a whole wanted something else you would 

 change the style of the magazine. I have no objections to the letters of 

 Guam. I think these are alright, while not interesting to me they have 

 scientific value nevertheless. Yours truly, 



" , Long Island, N. Y., Oct. 15, 1904. 



Editor of Plant World : 



" I thought I had not time to read the Plant World, so had decided 

 to discontinue it, but I find the articles on Guam are so instructive that 

 I can't forego the pleasure. Instead of too much Guam I say more 

 Guam. I am very sorry that there is a prospect of their discontinuance. 



" Knclose check for subscription. Yours truly. 



We believe the following ' ' prophecy ' ' from the Missouri Agricul- 

 tural College Farmer is food for thought, and inspiration to public opinion, 

 and should be incentive to action. The benefits of such education by no 

 means will stop with the farmer : " Is it too much to say that before many 

 years agriculture will know the same sudden popularity that mechanics 

 knew only a short time ago ? Not very long ago the mechanic arts 

 were learned by apprenticeship. If a man was a mechanic his sons were 

 likely to be mechanics. Now there are schools of engineering and ' tech- 

 nical institutes' all over the nation. Boys from every walk in life are 

 ambitious to be electrical or civil or steam or chemical engineers and the 

 mechanical industries have grown as nothing ever grew before. Certainly 

 plants and animals are infinitely more complex in their make-up than are 

 machines ; and surely the proper understanding of them will require at 

 least as high an order of scholarship and perhaps more time and study 

 than the understanding of machinery. Why, then, will not education 

 some day be as much of a requirement for farming as it is now for 

 engineering ? " 



