THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 23 



ter a longer apprenticeship with pencil and shears, he will 

 begin to realize that his case is not unlike that of other editors 

 in the same line. The trouble with all of us is that there are 

 not enough people in this country interested in our various 

 specialities to form a remunerative subscription list. We 

 Americans are fond of boasting of the intelligence of our 

 citizens, but the intelligence of the vast majority does not go 

 far beyond mere animal acuteness. After intelligence comes 

 culture and as a nation we are as yet far from being a cultured 

 one. We have a fair number of cultured individuals and it 

 is to this steadily growing circle that publications dealing 

 with things entirely aside from bread and butter or mere en- 

 tertainment, must appeal. The editors of the scientific period- 

 icals of the present are in a very literal sense pioneers and 

 subject to quite as many hardships, though of a different na- 

 ture, as were ever experienced by those rugged folk who clear- 

 ed the forests and subdued the wildernesss of the New World. 

 In botany, at least, there appears never to have been a publica- 

 tion devoted to plants and their surroundings until the advent 

 of The American Botanist. Agricultural and gardening 

 magazines have flourished for many years, and some few 

 periodicals devoted to descriptions of new species or investiga- 

 tions of their minute structure have attained a respectable age, 

 but in ecological botany this magazine seems to be the pioneer. 

 W^e cannot expect, at present, more than enough subscribers 

 to enable us to pay the printer's bills, but we do expect to keep 

 right along in this line until we have made a permanent de- 

 mand for such a magazine. The editor is personally acquaint- 

 ed with many of his subscribers and almost without exception 

 they are people of influence in their respective communities. 

 And he is pleased to fancy that their interest in real botany 

 is an indication of the qualities of mind necessary in such 

 positions. 



