EDITORIAL 



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According to our custom, no numbers of this magazine 

 will be issued for July and August. The number for Septem- 

 ber will be issued early so that when our subscribers return 

 from their vacations they will find the first number of the new- 

 volume awaiting them. We trust that all our readers will 

 have a pleasant summer and return from their outings with 

 full note-books. We dare not expect that their pocket books 

 will be in the same condition. 



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The botanically inclined often have occasion to observe 

 the truth of the old couplet that 



" 'Tis strange what difference there can be 

 'Tv.nxt tweedledum and tweedledee." 



This is well shown in the mere identification, of plants. Take 

 a plant in hand to a botanist for name and he will identify 

 it, give you its family history and tell you what it is good for 

 and consider your thanks adequate pay for the trouble. But 

 take a plant in your throat to the physician and he will identi- 

 fy it as diphtheria, and charge 3'ou well for telling what is good 

 for it. or rather what is good for you by being bad for it. 

 Nobody thinks the physician should work for nothing ; he has 

 studied hard in order to identify just such frisky bacteria and 

 ctlier plants that make our anatomy the scene of various 

 colonizations, and his money is well earned when he has aided 

 our bodies to exterminate the would-be colonizers. But the 

 botanist belongs to a different class. Though he studies as 

 long as the physician he usually works for nothing. The 

 great Linnaeus, himself, dubbed botany "the amiable science" 

 and its votaries ever since have been an amiable lot of men and 

 women wlio have done more work without reward than anv 



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