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in plant life without making pretentions to being botanists. Four 

 hundred and ten thousand are on the subscription lists of Park's 

 Floral Magazine — a publication that doubtless the majority of 

 botanists never heard of, though it is one of the oldest of our 

 botanical publications. One hundred and seventy-five thousand 

 subscribe to Vick's, Floral Life has 100,000 more and the Gar- 

 den magazine has 50,000. If we should include publications 

 devoted to farming and gardening still more astonishing figures 

 could be secured. 



I am convinced that this is the side of botany that high schools 

 will find most worth while to cultivate. It can be, and is being, 

 advanced by means of school gardens, horticultural and floricul- 

 tural courses, courses in structural botany and studies in the flora 

 of the surrounding region. 



The reason for lack of apparent interest in college is not diffi- 

 cult to find. Since the motto of the present generation is money 

 first and culture afterward, botany, which can offer no such 

 lucrative inducements for its study as can the mechanical and 

 physical sciences, is naturally passed by. The intelligent person, 

 however, who realizes that making a living and enjoying a living 

 are two different things, will continue to take up botany and 

 every wise teacher will encourage him to do so by every means 

 in his power. 



WiLLARD N. ClUTE. 

 JOLiET High School, 

 JoLiET, Illinois. 



The Museums Journal of Great Britain for March contains an 

 article by G. A. Dunlop which describes " Drying Plants without 

 Pressure " by the use of fine sand or boxwood sawdust, the 

 latter material preserving many of the natural colors and much 

 of the texture of flowers and leaves. 



Seven of the "Tabulae Botanicae " by the Berlin publishers, 

 Gebriider Borntrager have been completed. The charts are 

 large, with clear, accurate figures, and helpful text printed in 

 German, French, and English. The figures are not the ones so 

 commonly used in text-books. One chart illustrates stomata ; 

 the others are devoted to the moulds and the myxomycetes. 



