Preface 
skill, carefulness and strenuous labour of the sub- 
editors, occasional papers do escape them. 
The notices are almost invariably very short; often 
only the mere title of an article is given or a very brief 
abstract. 
Yet in spite of all this condensation and succinct- 
ness of treatment, the book consists, for the year 1905, 
of three stout volumes with in all 2703 pages and 
weighing 12} lbs. (including a necessarily stout binding). 
The number of books, articles and papers which have 
been classified and noted for this year is very great, 
being no less than 12,872, 
The actual printing required for all these botanical 
works is difficult to estimate. Some may be books of 
500 pages and others brief articles of five pages only, 
but on the very moderate estimate of twenty pages per 
notice, we obtain, for 1905 alone, the magnificent total 
of 257,440, or say over a quarter of a million, printed 
pages, often of a difficult and technical character and 
written in perhaps eight or nine different languages. 
That gives one some idea of the enormity of the real 
botany of to-day and of the unmitigated industry of 
botanists all over the world. 
I have been obliged to leave out much recent work 
on cell theory, on the fertilisation and development of 
the Cryptogams and on fossil plants. It is unfortunate 
that so much of English botanical work belongs to 
one or other of these abstruse branches, which really 
require for their enjoyment a long and arduous 
apprenticeship. 
An attempt has been made to divest the botany of 
to-day of all those cumbersome technical terms in 
which too many specialists are inclined to bury their 
researches. 
If a fact or theory in science is of any importance, 
vi 
