260 



in the flora of the region covered. The behef which has prevailed 

 in botanical circles in the past, whether rightly or wrongly, that 

 propositions put forward by others would not be investigated 

 solely on their merits by the Harvard botanists — a belief which 

 the sixth edition of Gray's Manual unfortunately did so much to 

 foster — will now happily have to disappear and be but a memory 

 of the days that were. 



By the above statements the writer does not, of course, mean 

 that there are not many features in this edition of " Gray's 

 Manual " open to criticism and strong differences of opinion, and 

 no one will probably admit this more readily than the learned 

 authors themselves. The first and probably the most obvious 

 question, which will occur to any one after a careful perusal of 

 this work, is why it is called " Gray's Manual." One can under- 

 stand that as a commercial proposition it may have been deemed 

 advisable to conserve the value of the advertising given to Gray's 

 works in the past. Apart from this, however, there is so little 

 left of the text of the old Gray's Manual, and the entire arrange- 

 ment, nomenclature, style, type, and even cover of the book, 

 have been so radically and fundamentally changed, that it seems 

 to the writer a misuse of terms to speak of this work as a new 

 edition of Gray's Manual. Indeed, so vast are the changes that 

 the writer feels called upon to offer his condolences to those 

 Bostonians of the old school for whom even the phraseology of 

 the former editions of Gray's Manual has been almost sacred. 

 In the present work they will find so much that is new that he is 

 almost afraid they will be compelled to fall back on Dr. Britton's 

 Manual to be again on familiar ground ! To be serious, how- 

 ever, the authors are doing themselves an injustice in not calling 

 the work what it really is. It is so nearly a new work that in 

 accuracy it should be called " Robinson & Fernald's Manual." 

 If the authors are too modest for this, calling it " Britton's 

 Manual — Harvard Edition," would be more accurate than using 

 the name which has been given, as in every respect it much more 

 resembles Dr. Britton's work than it does Dr. Gray's. 



In matters of nomenclature, the work unfortunately follows 

 the arbitrary and unjust Vienna Code, not because the learned 



