214 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 711 



possible to designate the plants of a limited 

 region so that all of the species may be recog- 

 nized. This is what has been done by Pro- 

 fessor Dr. Clements and his colleagues in the 

 University of Minnesota — Dr. C. O. Eosen- 

 dahl and Dr. F. K. Butters— in their " Guide 

 to the Spring Flowers of Minnesota." Here 

 by the time limitation, added to the areal 

 limitation, the authors make it possible to 

 readily distinguish practically all of the higher 

 plants their students will find. Keys are very 

 freely used, in fact the booklet is little more 

 than a collection of keys, first to the families, 

 then to the genera, and last to the species. 

 Etymologies are freely given, and every name 

 has its accent correctly indicated. It must 

 prove to be of the greatest use to the pupils in 

 botany classes in all grades of Minnesota 

 schools. 



About a year and a half ago Eoland M. 

 Harper published an instructive paper in the 

 Annals of the New York Academy of Sci- 

 ences (Vol. XVII., part 1) entitled "A Phy- 

 togeographical Sketch of the Altamaha Grit 

 Region of the Coastal Plain of Georgia." 

 With the index which has now been added it 

 constitutes a stout pamphlet of 436 pages, and 

 28 full-page plates of reproductions of photo- 

 graphs. A geological map of Georgia show- 

 ing especially the coastal plain region, in- 

 cluding the Altamaha Grit, and seventeen 

 diagrams in the test serve to further illus- 

 trate the paper. From map and text we learn 

 that the Altamaha Grit covers about 11,000 

 square miles in southern Georgia, stretching 

 in a belt of irregular width from the Savannah 

 Eiver southwestwardly to the southwestern 

 corner of the state. Originally the region 

 was covered with open forests in which there 

 was little shade, a condition favoring the 

 growth of shrubby and herbaceous vegetation. 

 The number of species of flowering plants and 

 ferns is given as 739, of which 53 are trees 

 and 107 shrubs and woody vines. The larger 

 trees (with trunks one to three feet in diam- 

 eter) are Nyssa uniflora, Persea pubescent, 

 Gordonia lasianthus, Liquidamher styraciflua, 

 Liriodendron tuUpifera, Magnolia grandi- 

 floraj M. glcbuca, Quercus alba, Q. michauxii. 



Q. lyraia, Q. phellos, Hicoria aquatica. Tax- 

 odium distichum, T. imhricarium, Pinus 

 palustris, P. elliottii, P. taeda, P. serotina, 

 P. glabra. Am ong the genera of arborescent 

 species that are notably absent from the region 

 are Tilia, Celtis, Populus, Catalpa, Sassafras, 

 Negundo, Platanus and Fagus. Other no- 

 table absentees are Monarda, Rosa, Banurv- 

 culus. Polygonum, Trillium, Adiantum and 

 Phegopteris. The paper will repay careful 

 reading and study. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF A GREAT JOURNAL 



The few living botanists who saw the be- 

 ginnings of the Botanical Gazette in 1875 

 have watched its later development with in- 

 creasing interest and gratification. Appear- 

 ing as a thin four-page, rather badly printed 

 sheet, of poor paper, and bearing the name of 

 The Botanical Bulletin, its beginnings were 

 anything but promising. Tet there was some- 

 thing in it that won it friends from the be- 

 ginning, in spite of the fact that it was issued 

 by a practically unknown young man, in a 

 little town in the Mississippi Valley, nearly 

 a thousand miles from any considerable botan- 

 ical library or collection of plants. It was 

 not profound, and no important discoveries 

 were announced in its pages. It was, how- 

 ever, an honest effort to tell truthfully and 

 simply some things that the editor and his 

 friends had seen in the vegetation about them. 

 It made no pretense to being anything more 

 than a little journal of little notes. And it 

 fulfilled this mission so well that it made a 

 distinct place for itself, and as the years went 

 on it enlarged its field, grew in size, and 

 finally came to be the one indispensable jour- 

 nal for every American botanist. It is not 

 necessary to relate the varying fortunes of this 

 journal, nor to tell of its repeated enlarge- 

 ments ; most of these are more or less familiar 

 to the present generation of botanists. Within 

 the last few months the Gazette has had to 

 take another step in its evolution. In its 

 growth year by year it has added more pages 

 of matter, more text figures and more full- 

 page plates, each of which has added not only 

 to its value to the reader, but very materially 

 to the expense of its publication. On com- 



