192 



and there is presented a fairly comprehensive history of floristic 

 botany in this country so far as its broad outlines are concerned. 



A rather meager account of the history of plant geography, 

 physiography, altitudinal distribution, and phenology is perhaps 

 to be accounted for. These subjects lend themselves to historical 

 treatment with difficulty, and the obvious scantiness of the data 

 must be accepted as an excuse for the all too brief record (7 pages) 

 that the author has set down. 



There follows then, in chapter two (pp. 45-92), a bibliography 

 of North American Botany, separated into (a) general works, 

 and (b) special works on the territories; the latter under the 

 eight sectional divisions into which Dr. Harshberger has divided 

 the continent. Each of these parts of the bibliography is alpha- 

 betic-chronologic in arrangement, and it is the latter feature of 

 the lists that attracts instant attention. All, or nearly all, the 

 important works are listed up to 1908; from then onwards one 

 finds nothing. The bringing of a bibliography only up to within 

 nearly three years of the date of publication is open to some 

 question, at least, as to timeliness; but the failure to list later 

 and more complete editions of old works is positively misleading 

 to the seeker after bibliographic facts, who has reason to expect 

 approximate completeness, at least up to 1908. A case well 

 illustrating this is the citation, both in the bibliography and 

 throughout the rest of the book, of Gannett's Dictionary of 

 Altitudes of the United States as Bulletin 160 of the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey, 1899, when a new edition, nearly twice as large, 

 was published in 1906 as bulletin 274 of the same series. 



Many minor inaccuracies are to be found, such as the date 

 of Grisebach's Flora of the British West Indies. It is given as 

 1864, when it is a well known fact that the work appeared in six 

 parts, five of which were issued before the close of 1861. Of the 

 forms of citation used here and throughout the body of the work, 

 it may be said that it is usually fairly clear just what is referred 

 to, and this in spite of the fact that sometimes the forms used 

 in zoological literature are adopted, sometimes other forms, pre- 

 sumably the author's, but almost never the form of citation 

 adopted at the Madison meeting of the A. A. A. S., section G, 



