96 PITTONIA. 



now, this has remained, for New England, the only book of 

 botany of its high stamp ; and we wonder if the century 

 will not complete itself before even Harvard University, with 

 all its increased facilities for every kind of botanical work, 

 will produce another equal to it. • 



Manual of the Botany of the. Northern United 



States, * * * * B}- Asa Gray, late Fisher Professor 

 of Natural History in Harvard University. Sixth 

 Edition, Revised and Extended Westivard to the 

 looth Meridian, By Sereno Watson, Curator of the 

 Gray Herbarium. * * * * New York and Chicago, 

 1S90. 



A neAv thing has come to pass in the history of botany in 

 this country. A new issue of Gray's Manual has met with 

 much adverse criticism and little or no praise. Ten years 

 ago no one would have dreamed of this as possible. During 

 more than forty years this book in its various editions seems 

 fully to have answered every recognized want of those sup- 

 posed to be interested in the botany of the " Northern United 

 States." Yet in no edition did the work sustain a higher 

 character than that of a terse, abbreviated and condensed 

 compilation. The author, long before its first issue, had 

 ceased to study, either for his own enlightenment or for 

 others' benefit, the flora of the vast region embraced, or any 

 part of it. He had become engaged in the prosecution of 

 other schemes. The book breathed no fresh odors of the 

 woods and meadows. It was about as incapable of inspiring 

 any interest, or begetting any spirit of investigation in those 

 who used it, as it would have been had it been written from 

 an herbarium in some foreign country. Nevertheless, as a 

 good ana ytical key to the accepted classification and con- 

 ventionally receivable nomenclature of the higher vegetation 

 of he region, there was a demand for it. There had been 

 both a demand for this inexpensive and elementary kind of 



