214 Rhodora [OcroBER 
in North America has been more carefully studied botanically than 
New England” the reviewer may appropriately confine his judgment 
of the book largely to this and the adjacent regions which, in view 
of the availability of information, should be among the most accurately 
described areas discussed in the book. 
2% t part contains chapters on History and Bibliography. 
Many familiar names appear in this portion which, although it is 
by no means complete, will give some impression of the amount of 
work done by others, and may possibly be suggestive to those who 
wish to carry the subjeet to something like completeness. But it is 
singular that there should be enumerated among the most important 
students of the New England flora Charles E. Hamlin (a geologist 
whose name wandered into certain botanical papers because of his 
geological and physiographic work upon Mt. Katahdin) and some 
others who at most have published only one or two very minor notes; 
while no mention either in the historical sketch or the bibliography 
workers and papers “it is incumbent on the writer to refer to only 
the most important.” But by what judgment, we may ask, is it 
deeided that the botanical works of Charles E. Hamlin (the geologist) 
and some who are enumerated as important students of the flora 
of the White Mountains are of more importance as botanical contri- 
butions than Bicknell’s eritical studies of the flora of Nantucket, 
F. S. Collins’s authoritative publications on the Algae and his capital 
accounts of Cape Cod, Clinton’s Ustilagineae of Connecticut, Dame & 
Collins’s Middlesex Flora, Dame & Brooks’s trustworthy Handbook 
e need of emulating their aceuracy and critical judgment the 
unfortunate volume which is now before us might never have been 
written. 
There is no branch of the botanical field which so much as phyto- 
geographic work demands thorough training in exact taxonomic detail 
accompanied by the most diseriminating judgment and prolonged and 
painstaking field-study. That the author of the Phytogeographie Sur- 
vey of North America has satisfactorily met these requirements must 
be doubted by many close students of our flora. Only a brief perusal 
of the book shows that for the most part it is composed of extracts 
