EDITORIALS. 
THE BOTANICAL EDITOR of the American Naturalist has done well 
in calling botanists to account for their persistent use of the old units 
of measurement. We take it for granted that argument 
The Metric is no longer necessary to establish the claim of the 
System in metric system. As Dr. Bessey says, the scientific bodies 
Botany of the country have urged upon Congress the advisability 
of legislating upon the subject, and are loud in their 
denunciation of the crudities of the old system. Among these pro- 
testing scientific men botanists are prominently represented, and it 
seems somewhat inconsistent for them to continue to use such meas- 
urements as lines, inches, etc. Usage is more powerful than legisla- 
tion in such a matter, and the change will be effected for botanists 
when their standard texts and leading journals rigidly adopt it, at 
least in all technical descriptions. In the Synoptical Flora, begun so 
long ago, uniformity seems to demand a continuation of the old units 
in all subsequent parts. In so newa publication as the ///ustrated 
Flora it is a pity that the metric system was not introduced. In the 
forthcoming Flora of North America it certainly should be adopted. 
The journals, however, can change at any time. It has been the 
policy of the BoranicaL GazeTTe to use the metric systém in all 
technical descriptions, unless for some reason the author prefers the 
old units. We would now suggest that all American journals and 
serial publications unite in making the change, not in loose fashion, 
but as an avowed policy. 
Ir 1s somewhat remarkable that the tropical laboratory proposition 
should have met with so immediate and so wide a 
Tropical _ response. Mr. MacDougal’s announcement of the com- 
Laboratory mission within two months of the first suggestion is 
Commission noteworthy, but less so than the composition of the 
commission. It might have been expected that this 
duty would find only some of our younger botanists ready, but with 
Dr. Fr arlow and Dr. engi: as the additional American members, 
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Rare 
