74 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



known in America, listing them alphabetically under their com- 

 mon names and adding to each a description of the flowers, the 

 relative importance of the plant to the bee-keeper, the quality 

 of the honey made from it, the range of the species, and a vast 

 amount of incidental information that the apiarist will find 

 necessary to have and which should prove of interest to those 

 who, to paraphrase a well-known injunction, have learned to 

 love the bee and leave it on its stalk. The book is well illus- 

 trated and well printed, and is for sale by the American Bee 

 Journal, Hamilton, III, for $2.50. 



Hunting for new species is an activity that appeals to 

 nearly everybody. The novice is delighted to find a species 

 new to his locality, but as he grows older nothing will satisfy 

 but the discovery of species new to science. Sooner or later, 

 however, there comes a time when he has worn out his locality. 

 In a trip of hundreds of miles from his home he will scarcely 

 encounter a species which he cannot name at sight. His de- 

 light in plants thereafter is likely to come largely from con- 

 sidering tliem from the philosophical side ; from discovering 

 their relationships to their habitat and to other forms of na- 

 ture. This is the last phase to which the naturalist comes, but 

 in many respects it is the most significant. If he does not give 

 up the ([uest until this stage is reached, he is likely to continue 

 it until his Inst field trip is ended. It is obvious that worthy 

 books on the i)hilosopliical side of botany must be rarer than 

 those devoted to earlier i)hases of the subject. Tl is easy to 

 write a manual or handbook but difficult, indeed, to produce 

 that form of literature which we know as the essay. And yet 

 our botanical literature will not have attained its fullness until 

 many books of this kind have appeared. Our own writers 

 have made a creditable start. Wilson Flagg, who is only a 

 name to many, Maurice Thompson, John lUirroughs, Henry 

 D. Thoreau, and a few more recent writers come to mind, but 



