BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 67 
greater measure in Philadelphia. The Botanical Club that was organized 
with as little organization as possible will try to make it very profitable to bot- 
anists in the way of becoming acquainted with fellow-workers and examining 
~ under competent guidance the interesting plants of the vicinity. We venture 
to say that the ballast grounds will be well ransacked and many of its waifs 
added to our collections. Questions of postage are also to be discussed, and it 
is to be hoped that something definite can be arranged with the eal author- 
ities. Many instances of mismanagement and injustice have already been re- 
ported to the committee, and we doubt not that some are yet to be heard from. 
With such definite complaints something can be accomplished. 
Pror. T. Carven, of Florence, in 1881 presented to the Linnean Academy 
a treatise upon the classification of plants. It has now been re-edited by the 
author, in French, under the title, Pensées sur la Taxonomie Botanique, and pub- 
lished last year in Engler’s Botanische Jahrbiicher. So far as Phanerogams 
one now consents to this arrangement, the question naturally arises, When are 
we going to begin to use it? Prof. Caruel also discards our old divisions of 
olypetale, Gamopetale, and Apetale, which every systematic botanist has long 
seen are too artificial to stand, and substitutes the cohorts Dichlamydanthe, Mono- 
chlamydanthe, and Dimorphanthe. We would suggest that when the change has 
could wig age spell n nor Beobaanne ave 3 names as the above. According to Dr. 
rray, the firs and Polypetalous orders generally ; 
the second all the Candollean ordehe from Aosoees to Fumariaces, the 
actacee, Portulacaces, etc.; the third has Bogoniacex, Euphorbiacee, Urtica- 
cee, etc., and the Risadlaaious orders. Some Jussieu or DeCandolle must arise 
an give us a new arrangement. 
CURRENT LITERATURE. 
Elementary Botany, with student’s guide to the examination and description of 
plants. By George Macloskie, D.Sc., LL.D., Professor of Natural History 
in the J. C. Green School of Science, Princeton: N. J., ete. New York 
Henry Holt & Co., 1883. pp. viu1, 37, 
€ who receives a new elementary botan now-a-days, turns to its exam- 
ination in a somewhat aie 88 frame of mind, hardly daring to hope that he 
ia i in it Pet thing fresh or new, so often ‘have re gt opes been disap- 
. Lg 2 e 
ee ks yet come into our hands. tyle is admirably clear and vigorous, 
© pages unencumbered with moor dS (though technical terms are never 
