*^ EDITORIAL l^-i 



The editor's decision to spend two of the summer months 

 in the desert was made so quickly that there was no time to 

 apprise our subscribers of his intended absence or to make 

 arrangements for the appearance of the magazine on its regu- 

 lar date. Though this number is late, we expect the November 

 number to be on time, or luit Httle delayed, and here take the 

 opportunity to express our appreciation of those patient sub- 

 scribers who hiave forborne to complain of the non-receipt of 



the issue. 



* * * 



It is certainly delightful to run across those naive bits of 

 natural history, which the sapient editors of the gardening and 

 household magazines use to ornament their columns. You 

 couldn't sell one of these editors a throughly reliable account 

 of any plant, but just get it up in the style of Aristotle or some 

 of the other writers of anti(|uity and they fall for it at once. 

 The following choice bit was culled from the columns of a 

 magazine so eminent that [)ul)lication in it carries mucii weight, 

 but we are disposed to think that the editor was on his vaca- 

 tion, when the article was accepted. It is entitled "The Plant 

 That Never Dies" and contains this astounding mis-informa- 

 ti(»n. "The florist told her that if she put the driedup ball of 

 brown leaves in water it would blossom out into a fresh green 

 plant in a day. Skeptically she did it and when the twenty- 

 four li<iurs were up, lo, the [jlant had blossomed. gi\ing out a 

 sweet, heavy, oriental odor. It bidught this odor with it from 

 the far-off Holy Land where it grew. It is another miracle 

 of that miracle-land for it iH'\er dies. W'lien it is out of water 



