124 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



6th edition was out of date but who hesitated about using the 

 local nomenclature that more tecent works affected. We can- 

 not say that we are entirely pleased with everything in the new 

 book, but it is so much better than anything else, that we pur- 

 pose making it the standard for this magazine hereafter. The 

 authorities certainly gained a point over other systems when 

 they adopted a nomenclature in harmony with the rules of the 

 Vienna Congress. This also saves us the names of a vast 

 number of species that otherwise would have been changed and 

 as a result the nomenclature of the book has not the unfamil- 

 iar look we feared it would have. Nevertheless, there are quite 

 enough changes to make a conservative uncomfortable.. In 

 the matter of keys to genera and species, however, the book is 

 a great disappointment. There is no longer excuse for string- 

 ing a key along through several pages of text. The people in 

 New York could have given the authors a great deal of in- 

 formation on the making of business-like keys. A proper key 

 should enable one to practically identify his specimens from the 

 keys alone. The treatment of forms and varieties, too, is ex- 

 tremely uneven. Not only are many mere ecological forms 

 treated with all the pomp and circumstance of varieties (as 

 this book regards varieties) but other and more distinct forms, 

 though called varieties are dismissed with a word or two in the 

 text. It is fairly impossible to discover from the book what 

 conception the authors have of the term. To the credit of the 

 book may be said that the families and orders have been re- 

 arranged to harmonize with the latest ideas and more than a 

 thousand illustrations have been introduced as an added help 

 in identifying. These illustrations are not scattered uniformly 

 through the book, but are confined to difficult families such as 

 the cresses, grasses, umbellifers. sedges, etc. We note with 

 approval, too, the retention of italicised words to designate 

 important characters in the descriptions of species, a feature 

 that some recent books have eliminated, partly, we feel sure, 

 because there are some descriptions of "new species" that 



