250 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
States, issued by a good publishing house in Boston. The territory 
embraced by this first edition of Gray’s Manual extended from 
Maine to Wisconsin, and far enough southward to include Penn- 
sylvania and Ohio. In an exceedingly well written and instructive 
Preface we meet with the statement that it has been “firmly 
intended to restrict [the book] to 350 pages;" and here we seem to 
have intimation of a requirement of the publishers that the pages 
of this Manual must be few. They were, like publishers in general, 
apprehensive that too many pages would reduce the profits; and 
what troubled them in this instance was—had they but known 
the real name of it—the species question. 
But this initial edition of Gray’s Manual—by much the most 
handsome, as well as scholarly in its substance and make up of all 
the editions—came out in more than twice the 3 50 pages, and was a 
remunerative enterprise nevertheless. And now, in order to 
show how serenely ,and during half a lifetime, the author of Gray’s 
Manual escaped the troubles of the species question, a comparison | 
of some sort must be made between the taxonomic contents of 
this first edition of 1848, and the sixth edition of 1889. To accom- 
plish this it is only needful to make selection of several represen- 
_ tative genera of higher plants, and contrast the number of species 
attributed to each such genus in those two different editions 
the dates of which indicate an interval of 41 years. 
1848 1889 
Antennaria I I 
abis IO 9 
Cnicus IO 8 
Crataegus IO 
Eupatorium 13 16 
Hieracium 6 6 
Potentilla 19 14 
ubus 10 11 
Solidago 32 42 
Viola 17 
2 These figures, as I have with care studied the genera as they 
appear in the two books, have proven an astonishment even to 
. myself; for, while from my very boyhood forward to early man- 
. hood I had heard it said that the author of this manual was dog- 
ees and intolerant of amy questionings of his own infallibility 
| O still, after all the years, 1 was not yet so 
