EDITORIAL. 
WITH THIS NUMBER the GAZETTE completes its second decade. Be- 
ginning in a very small way, with no assurance of success or special 
that all our botanists have written for it, from Gray and Engelmann 
down through the lengthening and still living list. It therefore repre- 
sents well the history of American botany for twenty years. At first 
finding it difficult to fill its few pages with worthy material, its recent 
large volumes have been kept within bounds only by careful selec- 
tion. At first necessarily confined to the region of systematic botany, 
it seeks now to represent all the multiplying fields of work. 
ONE UNFORTUNATE THING in the history of the GazETTE has been 
the unavoidable changes in the office of publication. From Hanover 
to Crawfordsville, Bloomington, and now Madison, it represents the 
usual shiftings in the experience of western college men, and seems to 
deserve the characterization of “this migratory publication” given by 
Jackson in his “Guide,” who, by the way, confused places of printing 
with offices of publication. But it has been fortunate enough in its 
long continued editorial service to offset the change in its local habi- 
tation, and to give it that consistent purpose which makes for devel- 
opment. It has sometimes been remarked that in this development 
the more formal papers have crowded out those small notes and 
more transient and more immediately interesting records of botanical 
activity. 
Tus WRITING is more by way of reminiscence than of promise, but 
it ls proper to refer to the future. In the present condition of botany, 
5°] 
