THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 123 



s^'stematists call what they please." Most botanists who 

 are not actually engaged in naming plants begin to real- 

 ize the folly of changing names merely for the sake of "pri- 

 ority" and to appreciate the great burden such changes 

 have placed upon all other branches of botanical activity. 

 Botanical works in the past have used the terms which 

 some nomenclaturists are now doing their best to dis- 

 credit; should they succeed in this, future students will be 

 obliged to master two nomenclatures, one for the present, 

 and another for the past, for these old books must contin - 

 ue to be consulted. 



* 

 We have several times had occasion to refer to the ap- 

 petite for the marvelous evinced by the average newspaper 

 reporter who can transform the most ordinary fact into a 

 piece of wonderful fiction by a few deft strokes of his pen. 

 No doubt we shall continue to have these romances until 

 the editors all have a botanical education or are willing 

 to submit botanical articles to some botanist for correc- 

 tion. One of the most interesting of these fictions has re- 

 cently been brought to light by Forestry and Irrigation. 

 It was originally published b\' the Saturday Evening Post 

 and deals wnth that interesting tree, the Eucal3^ptus. 

 Among other things it says: Five years from planting, 

 groves raised from seedlings will yield 75 cords of stove 

 wood an acre. Three to five 3'ears from the time of cut- 

 ting, sprouts that spring froin the stumps mature into 

 trees that produce more cords to an acre than the original 

 growth. Continuing in the same strain it is stated that 

 "some varieties thrive in tropical sw^amps and others 

 flourish in the mountain snows far above the timber line.' '' 

 Commenting on this Forestry and Irrigation remarks, 

 "Just think of the points brought out. According to the 

 voracious not to say veracious space writer we have in 

 the Eucal^^ptus the first and only tree to grow above 

 timber line and we begin to wonder what the timber line 

 was ever invented for. Consider the fact of saw logs 

 grown while you wait and the prolific sprouting which 



