4 SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB 
that the Torrey Botanical Club so change the character of Torreya 
that it would be entirely of an Abstract nature. The desirability 
could be made available at once. The income now set aside from 
Club dues and that derived from subscriptions would have to be 
augmented from other sources. The proposal was made that 
financial assistance for the first two years should be guaranteed 
by the Club and that subsequently the greatly increased circulation 
of Torreya, in its new form, would tend to make it a self-sustaining 
journal. 
PROFESSOR К. A. HARPER emphasized the need of critical 
reviews, as well as colorless abstracts, with a view to raising the 
general standards of our work and perhaps in some cases to reduc- 
ing the length and number of papers published. 
Dr. №. L. BRITTON gave a tentative estimate of the number of 
pages of such an Abstract Journal and of the probable annual cost 
of printing. и < 
PROFESSOR GEORGE Е. ATKINSON remarked: I have given this 
subject of an Abstract Journal, to be published in this country, 
.very little thought, although I have known for several months that 
it has been under consideration by some botanists. What I shall 
now say on the subject is of course not the result of careful delibera- 
tion nor have I had the opportunity of hearing any very definite 
suggestions concerning the plan, aside from the remarks I have 
heard this evening, except that the abstracts should be quite full, 
that the journal should be published in the English language, and 
that the abstracts should be published within a reasonable time 
after the appearance of the original contribution. 
I have felt that there was a great waste of effort and money in 
our present plan of abstracts in our current botanical journals, in 
this country as well as in Europe. The same contribution is re- 
viewed in from five to ten or more journals. To have the journals 
for their original contributions, we are obliged to pay for all this 
reduplication of abstracts, or if we take the journal for the ab- 
stracts chiefly, we must subscribe to a dozen or more and still pay 
for this needless duplication. 
division of abstracts and thus avoid duplication. For example 
one journal might confine its abstracts to morphology and phys- 
