EDITORIAL Shs 
on etting « anew scientific give pe is proebly always a pic pis 
I ge crying need for a publication ‘tape on the ilies isi 
down. Foy a time it seemed as if we had made a mistake—that 
the botanical public cared neither to subscribe for nor contrib- 
ute to a periodical devoted to the systematic side of botany and 
restricted to the study of flowering plants. However, there is 
now a little showing of improvement all along the line. The 
following from an eastern subscriber is highly gratifying: “You 
are certainly doing excellent work for western botany, and I 
only wish some of our eastern publications would follow your 
example in many particulars. I often longed for some period- 
ical devoted to systematic botany of the higher plants. Rhodora 
comes closest to it, but it gives lots of room to the lower organ- 
isms. The studies are so separate that it is rare to find any one 
person interested in both.” 
~ 9 BPS a ee 
“7 34 
—— vie 
It was not our intention to deal only with western botany, 
but the natural trend seems to be that way. The contributors 
to the volume just completed, with one exception, are residents 
of the western two-thirds of the country, while, strange to say, 
the most of the subscribers, are from the east, and nearly as 
many are from Europe as are from California. If this is to bea | 
_ journal devoted to western botany, we think the western botan- 
ists, outside of the few who have loyally stood by the magazine, 
should wake up to the privileges they may enjoy, and support 
the work. 
The whole region from the rocky mountains west contains 
“much territory practically unknown botanically. There are 
people in every one of the States embraced in this region who 
are teaching botany, and others who while not teaching are in- 
terested in the subject. Yet the active workers in this vast ter- 
