38 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



great drawbacks. They treat only of the showy flowers and 

 they do not fit the student who becomes interested for going- 

 further. The only real way to become skilled in the identi- 

 fication of plants is to get a scientific manual and begin at the 

 beginning. ■ To those who would try this way we can recom- 

 mend Wood's "Class-book of Botany." Any person of aver- 

 age intelligence who will read through the chapters in this 

 book and answer the questions at the end, will be equipped to 

 identify practically any pldnt in his vicinity. Of course, like 

 Mr. Wilkinson, he will find some problems hard to solve, 

 but continued study w^ill give the power to solve them. The 

 "Illustrated Flora" mentioned contains illustrations of all 

 our fiowering plants and is excellent for reference but its price 

 puts it out of the reach of many. It may be said, however, 

 that no single book written will give one a complete survey 

 of botany. For the mere naming of plants a good manual 

 like Gray's Manual or Wood's "Class-book" is sufficient, 

 but one who is making a dead set at naming the plants of his 

 vicinity can look ahead to the time when there will be no new 

 plants to name. Then what? When this question presents 

 itself it is usually answered in one of several ways. The 

 student may become a specialist in some line that attracts 

 him, such as the grasses, carices, willows or hawthorns; he 

 may turn his attention to the flowerless plants and devote his 

 attention to mosses, ferns, fungi or algae ; he may become 

 a nomenclaturist and spend the rest of his days wrangling 

 about the mere names of plants; or he may become interested 

 in plants as living things — in ecological botany, if you will — 

 and find the field of study ever widening before him. Then 

 it is that he will find a new need for books and in time he 

 will make place on his shelves for Kerner's "Natural History 

 of Plants," Goebel's "Organography," Lubbock's "Flowers, 

 Fruits and Leaves," Rendle's "Classification of Flowering 

 Plants." Henslow's "The Making of Flowers," Darwin's 



