es 
: 
January 30, 1907 13 
EDITORIAL 
After nearly seven years as a private enterprise, devoted 
almost exclusively to my own writings, I have decided to throw 
this journal open to the botanical public rather than start a new 
publication, for I am convinced that a journal such as I hope 
this one may become is badly needed. 
A great many people are interested in plants—just plain 
ordinary plants that grow in the woods and fields—but are not 
interested in the learned papers which are worked out in the 
laboratories of our institutions of learning. It is our intention 
to exclude all such highly technical articles, and keep the pub- 
lication as it has been from the beginning, a journal devoted to 
systematic botany. And furthermore, we intend to deal only 
with flowering plants, and perhaps ferns, although the Fern 
Bulletin should properly be the medium for publication on the 
latter. There are journals devoted exclusively to cryptogams; 
and they should be able to take care of all that is written in 
their particular lines, the Bryologzst dealing with mosses, hepat- 
ics and lichens, and the Journal of Mycology with fungi. 
There may be some who object to articles taken up by the 
descriptions of new species. The making of new species is a 
necessary evil, for many parts of our vast country are imperfectly 
explored, many plants are of local distribution, and each year 
brings out new species as new territory is looked into, old ground 
gone over more thoroughly, or the botanical “trash piles” turned 
over and critically examined. The true botanist and lover of 
plants derives much pleasure in searching out and knowing the 
peculiarities of the different species with which he comes im con- 
tact, and the more he4}does of this, especially in the field—for 
no true study of plants can be carried on without intimate field 
knowledge—the more he finds to segregate. 
This brings us -to an important point. The man who goes 
out and communes with nature, be he professional or amateur, 
sees things, and is very liable to discover new facts about old 
