262 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
fruitful of results,—these are apt to display a forwardness in. 
proclaiming their discoveries which the venerative and submissive 
party is saved from. 
: If freedom of botanical research, and the practice of scanning 
nature with one's own eyes rather than through those of dogmatic, 
domineering and repressive makers of books,—if this, on the whole, 
and scientifically viewed, is the better way, then that was a propitious 
day for East North American botany which gave to it Britton’s 
Manual. Even though in respect to this book there would be 
found a contingent who would pay it undue veneration, this was 
of no moment compared with the fact that the right of the old 
imperium to its usurped supremacy should be in this bold emphatic 
manner disputed. 
This new manual, emanating from New York, affirmed,— 
and eventually, along with other great botanical events, each of 
equal import, confirmed—the strong establishment of a new centre 
of zealous work, and the seat of a powerful rival authority on 
systematic botany. The book itself looked almost thin and small 
by the side of the Gray’s Manual of 1889; but that was because 
of differences in paper, and in the compactness of the pages in the 
New York volume; but when this book was opened you found 
it contained almost rroo pages of. this small-type printing in 
crowded paragraphs. The Gray's Manual of the edition next 
preceding this, with its more comely setting and paragraphing, 
giving to less matter much more space, showed but 750 pages. 
Possibly,—I may even venture to say probably—had the matter 
of the Gray's book of 1889 been printed in the same style and type, 
and on the same thin paper, the whole would have been reduced 
to 600 pages if not to 550, or half the bulk of the Britton book. 
I feel quite sure in saying that the matter, mainly descriptive, of 
Britton’s Manual of 1901 must amount to one-third more than 
that of the edition of Gray which was practically its contemporary 
book. And the very much greater bulk of the New York book 
will be found partly due then to hundreds of excellent species of 
A early authors which, suppressed without reason in all the editions 
of Gray, Dr. Britton and his collaborators had investigated, 
found valid and restored; also partly, and more largely to new 
ies which had been made in an empire of botanical ground 
vhic a Dr. Gray all his long life time had supposed to have been 
