84 BOTANICAL, GAZETTE. [March, 



EDITORIAL. 



The Agricultural Experiment Stations are now fairly launched 

 on their way, and their reports are beginning to come in rapidly. Some 

 of them are valuable, some are worthless, evidently having been made to 

 order. It is, perhaps, hardly fair to make such a criticism so early in the 

 history of these stations, but we wish to do them a service if possible. 

 The requirements of a report at certain stated intervals is American, but 

 dreadfully unscientific, and the general supposition is that at these stations, 

 at last, we have endowment for research and not simply one for "re- 

 ports." If they are to begin at once with reports upon all sorts of hasty 

 and meaningless experiments, we shall be worse off than we were before. 

 We thoroughly understand that many in charge of this work can not 

 perform any other kind of experiments, and concerning these we have 

 nothing to say. But there are those in charge who know how to 

 work, for they have already made a record, and we want to see the op- 

 portunity given them. The popular American idea is to experiment two 

 or three weeks, and then write a report, and if real workers are com- 

 pelled to come under such an order of things, their publication can be 

 but little better than others. We would protest, therefore, against com- 

 pelling a botanist at one of these stations to write a report when he has 

 nothing to say. He must not be hurried even, for the best experimental 

 work can only be done with the idea of unlimited time as a factor. A 

 station director must know that his man is competent, that he is actually 

 doing work, and then wait patiently for results. The ability to get out a 

 report at short intervals ought to be taken as an indication of a man's in- 

 competency as an investigator. If the requirement of " reports " from 

 the scientific staff of these stations could be removed, and only mono- 

 graphs prepared after ample investigation, our new venture might really 

 prove the beginning of an endowment for research. 



CURRENT LITERATURE. 



Watson 



— — - w - v « , "^» **-**u nuiuny. 



A great herbarium should always be productive, and it is of inesti- 

 mable advantage to American botanists that our greatest herbarium has 

 always had m it men with the spirit and ability to work. The accumula- 

 tion of a great herbarium which contributes little or nothing to general 

 botanical knowledge is hardly better than a miser's accumulation of 

 money. The " Contributions" from the Harvard Herbarium form a set 

 of boUrncal publications that no working botanist can be without, or else 

 he will be working in the dark. 



The last of these is before us. 1 The first part is a report of a collec- 



pp.!« W 8- : >N i Kdjfe fg 'tions to American Botany, xvi. (Proc. Am. Acad. xxiv. 



