LIBRARY 
NEW YORK 
BOTANICAL 
GARDEN 
CaTALOGUE OF NorTH AMERICAN PLants. By A. A. Heller. Second 
Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Lancaster, Pa., 1900; published 
by the author. 
Two years or more ago Mr. Heller undertook the somewhat thank- 
less task of preparing a check list of the North American flora north of 
Mexico, embodying the nomenclature of the Rochester code, which had 
practically supplanted the old individual system. Though hastily pre- 
pared and rather carelessly revised, the first catalogue served a useful 
purpose as an exchange list and convenient reference book, and now 
with riper experience, more extended general studies, and the assist- 
ance of specialists in certain groups, Mr. Heller has published a cata- 
logue that is creditable to him in many ways. 
The new book contains 252 pages, and the typography is most 
attractive in its clearness and proper contrast of fonts. The printing is 
on one side of the page only, thus affording abundant opportunity for 
the marginal notes and corrections that everyone finds essential in 
using a list of this kind. We have observed a few errors, but they are 
not sufficiently numerous to be a source of discomfort to the reader. 
The author explains in his preface an unfortunate mistake which he 
made in numbering the genera according to the sequence of families in 
Engler and Prantl. We scarcely believe, however, that this generic 
enumeration is of much value. It would have been wiser to omit all 
generic numbers and insert author-citations instead. 
Realizing the great deficiency in the first edition of his catalogue, 
Mr. Heller has added synonyms with much greater freedom, and no 
one accustomed to the nomenclature of Gray’s Manual need have diffi- 
culty in ascertaining the equivalent of any unfamiliar name. A large 
number of new combinations are published in the preface, and the list 
is extended: into the pages of Muhlenbergia a periodical elsewhere dis- 
cussed. Mr. Heller’s systematic treatment is drawn on liberal lines, 
and he has wisely followed, in large and difficult genera, the course of 
the latest monographers of each particular group. We believe that the 
work will find a ready sale, and that it will prove an indispensable ref- 
erence check-list for amateur and professional botanists alike. 
CU. L. Pollard, in The Plant World for January, 1901. 
