248 ; PITTONIA. 
paper on Californian botany ? In Dr. Kellogg's day—and 
he made no great pretensions—a non-resident botanical con- 
tributor would have had his error kindly pointed out, and 
his correction of the manuscript would have been waited 
for. 
The Memoir upon Geraniace impresses us as the most 
excellent produetion of its kind which has appeared in 
America within recent years. The clear discriminations, the 
full descriptions, excellent typcgraphy, useful illustrations, 
and elaborate list of references—all these combine to make a 
monograph which every botanist must prize. The species 
are not very numerous, but, as Professor Trelease’s pages 
show, in so familiar an old genus as Geranium there was 
much to be done in the way of clearly identifying and satis- 
factorily describing even our introduced and naturalized 
species. We feel like commending this Memoir to eastern 
botanists everywhere, as illustrating the kind of labor still 
waiting to be done in many a small natural order whose 
genera and species are equably distributed throughout our 
wide land, and which have never yet been collectively elabo- 
rated with due care and painstaking. We shall hope to see 
much more of this kind of work from the same pen. 
Biological botanists are said to be more or less indifferent 
to matters of system and of nomenclature; but Professor 
Trelease, though well known 1n biological circles, is far from 
indifferent to the cause of systematic botany, as this and other 
recent monographs plainly enough declare. To nomenclature 
we wish he were not so indifferent; but, over against this 
which we deem a fault, we place the great merit of his free- 
dom from all dogmatism and self-assertion. It is most 
pleasing to read, now-a-days, the writings of a botanist who, 
carrying with him always the evidences of learning and 
ability, yet often admits, tacitly if not openly, that other 
people may possibly know something, and be in the right 
where differing with himself. We have not had many such 
authors. The training of most of us has been in a school of 
different tone. 
