1891 •) Curreyit Literature. 



293 



EDITORIAL. 



The general ignorance regarding the essential processes of plant 

 life is appalling. If one were to ask the persons he met in a walk what 

 trees lived on and how they secured their food, the answers received 

 would doubtless be more curious than edifying. It would probably be 

 a safe venture to assert that not one college graduate in one hundred 

 can give a clear statement of vegetable nutrition, assimilation and res- 



• a 



piration. And yet the college graduate has doubtless had the best op- 

 portunity of any class of persons to become informed upon subjects 

 like these. The fact is that some of the most generally interesting 

 topics relating to plants, those which bring plants into a more intimate 

 relation with animals as living, active beings, have not yet received 

 due recognition from general educators, or even from botanical teachers 

 themselves. No one can accuse American botanists of being slow or of 

 lack of enthusiasm, but having been absorbed in assorting the rich 

 material of the native flora, in working out the life histories of the 

 lower forms, and in studying minute structures by the newly developed 

 staining and embedding methods, there has seemed to be no room and 

 time for the consideration of other topics. But no one who has 

 watched the course of the science elsewhere, or even at home, can 

 doubt that the day for physiology to be the dominant subject in 

 American botanical thought is not far off. When that day arrives, we 

 may expect it to be more absorbing and more revolutionary of previous 

 ways of thinking, than any of the recent waves that have disturbed the 

 even tenor of botanical progress. It is to be hoped, indeed, that, be- 

 sides the changes which may be effected in the course of thought 

 within the botanical domain, this wave may be sufficiently powerful to 

 beat high upon the rock bound coast of popular ignorance. Such a 

 change in sentim-nt might give the opportunity to establish a new set 

 °f ideas regarding matters of physiology. 



CURRENT LITERATURE. 



Recent systematic Papers. 

 Contributions from the National Herbarium. — The first volume 

 of this series of contributions is continued by the appearance of no. 



j 



j 



Botanist, and treats of the collections of plants made by Dr. Edward 

 Palmer, in 1890, in western Mexico and Arizona. The collection from 

 Alamos and vicinity proved to be a very rich om\ no less than 45 new 



