FEBRUARY 22, 1901. ] 
von Schrenk of the Missouri Botanical 
Garden, was appointed to consider the 
question of securing better reviews of cur- 
rent botanical literature. A preliminary 
report was made by this Committee last 
June, at a special meeting of the Society 
held in New York at the time of the meet- 
ing of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science. In this report the 
committee includes the correspondence be- 
tween the secretary of the Society, Pro- 
fessor Ganong of Smith College, and Dr. 
Oscar Uhlworm of Cassel, Germany, the 
Editor-in-Chief of the Botanisches Central- 
blatt. Realizing that the aim of the Cen- 
tralblatt is to publish such reviews and that 
it is inadvisable to multiply journals, the 
committee suggested some changes in the 
plan and management of that publication. 
In the words of Professor Ganong’s letter : 
The chief cause of dissatisfaction with the 
Centralblatt in this country is its policy of 
publishing only a part of the reviews in the 
Centralblatt itself, relegating the remainder to 
Beihefte, for which a considerable additional 
subscription must be paid. If this were ren- 
dered necessary by the number of the reviews 
there could be no objection to it, but obviously 
the additional reviews necessitating the Beihefte 
are crowded out by the publication of the 
Originalmittheilungen. Those who subscribe 
for the Centralblatt do so for the sake of the re- 
views and announcements of new literature, 
and not for the original articles, which have 
no logical place in a journal devoted to reviews. 
The Committee feels assured that the relega- 
tion of the Originalmittheilungen to the Beihefte, 
or their omission altogether, and the inclusion 
of all the reviews in the Centralblatt itself 
would make the Centralblatt much more widely 
and completely acceptable to botanists. They 
believe, also, that the increased support which 
would be given it would compensate for any 
loss of subscriptions by the cessation of the 
Beihefte, and also (and this they regard as of 
much importance) it would tend to prevent the 
appearance of any competing journal. 
SCIENCE. 
299 
In regard to matters of detail the com- 
mittee’s letter continues : 
The Committee, with other botanists, believes 
that the reviews of a journal devoted to communicat- 
ing the appearance of new literature should be, 
above all, prompt and descriptive. What botanists 
mainly wish to learn from reviews is whether the 
work reviewed is important to their particular in- 
terests, and what its contribution is to the science 
as a whole. The abstracting of the contents of a 
book or paper in detail seems rather to belong to 
such a work as Just’s Jahresbericht, and may well 
be left to it, thus shortening the descriptive reviews; 
and making it the easier to include them all within 
the limits of a journal without the need for Bethefte. 
Promptness in the appearance of reviews is particu- 
larly desirable, particularly to those who live at a 
distance from the place of publication. 
The reply to this communication, while 
encouraging, was not all that the commit- 
tee desired. Thus, while the editors of the 
Centralblatt were willing to confine the re- 
views to the journal itself, relegating the 
original articles to the Bethefte, they wished 
to be guaranteed a certain annual subsidy, 
and to still retain the right to require the 
subscriber to pay for both Centralblatt and 
Beihefte. To these stipulations the com- 
mittee very properly demurred, and after 
discussing other proposed plans, e. g., the 
printing of such reviews in the form of a 
card catalogue, or the establishment of a 
new journal, asked for more time for fur- 
ther consultation with the publishers and 
editors of the Centralblatt. 
Accordingly a second interchange of let- 
_ters was had, and the results were laid be- 
fore the Society as a second report, in De- 
cember last, during the annual meeting 
held in Baltimore. Professor Ganong’s let- 
ter is as follows (omitting some formal mat- 
ters which need not be repeated here): 
The Committee has given very careful considera- 
tion to the letter of the editors and publishers of the 
Centralblatt, and has gathered all available data from 
the discussions of the society and by correspondence 
with many botanists in America and elsewhere. As 
a result the Committee has to present the following 
