BOOK XOTES, NEWS, ETC. 190 



as well as economical — indeed we are not sure that those who have 

 decided on its suppression may not have been influenced by the 

 prominence given to matter of scientific rather than economic value. 

 There is some satisfaction in finding that even the Times cannot 

 control everything, but the protests that have been made indepen- 

 dently of that paper might, we think, have been allowed to prevail, 

 especially when the lavish— some would saj^ extravagant — expenditure 

 in other directions is taken into account. As the Times points out, 

 " the net cost of the Bulletin is more than counterbalanced bv the 

 enrichment of the library at Kew by publications received from all 

 quarters in exchange for copies of the Bulletin. In enemy countries 

 the starvation of intellectual activities is not accounted to be any 

 part even of war economy. The German publications corresponding 

 to the Keiu Bulletin continue regularly to appear and even to receive 

 reports from colonies which are no longer German." 



The matter, however, has been finally decided, and on June 11 

 Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Lord of the Treasury, announced that " the 

 Controller's decision was acquiesced in by the Director of Kew 

 Gardens," and that " the Editor had been consulted before any action 

 was taken." Asked whether the Director's acquiescence "^implied 

 approval, Mr. Baldwin stated that he " was not qualified to answer 

 the question." It is thus too late to offer any suggestion, or one 

 Avould have been inclined to ask whether by raising the price of the 

 Bulletin, which has always been purely nominal, something might 

 not have been done to meet the difficulty. It is understood that the 

 fee now charged for entering the Royal Gardens was imposed on the 

 ground that otherwise it would have been necessary to close them ; 

 and a similar course might perhaps have been adopted with regard to 

 the Bulletin : or it might have been possible to issue it less fre- 

 quently, and temporarily to restrict the contents to subjects of 

 economic importance. Anj^thing would have been better than 

 stopping it altogether, and we regret exceedingly that such a course 

 has been decided upon. 



At the Annual Meeting of the Linnean Societj^ on June 7, the 

 first Hooker lecture was delivered by Prof. F. O. Bower, F.R.S., Avho 

 chose for his subject " The Natural Classification of Plants," illus- 

 trating his points by reference to the Filicales. The Hooker lecture 

 arose from a bequest of the late Sir Jose^Dh Hooker, augmented bv 

 subscrijjtions from the Fellows of the Society and a further contribu- 

 tion b}' Lady Hooker. 



Messes. Routledge send us "an entirely new edition " of John- 

 son's Gardeners' Dictionary and Cultural Instructor, which, based 

 on the original edition of 1846, has been recast and brought down to 

 the present A^ar by Messrs. J. Fraser and A. Hemslev, whose many 

 years' connection with Kew is sufticient guarantee of their com2)etence 

 for the task. It would be an interesting task to compare the present 

 with the original of seventy 3'ears ago, and we hope this will be done 

 in one of our horticultural journals. Here we must content ourselves 

 by expressing our appreciation of the amount of information contained 

 in the work — a handsome volume in demy octavo, containing more 

 than 900 pages in double columns, printed in small but very clear 



