EDITORIAL COMMENT. 
‘¢ New Species.” — In a recent number of Science (No. 233) Mr. 
C. L. Marlatt speaks a necessary word as to some recent literature 
dealing with scale insects, pointing out that new species are being 
described upon entirely insufficient grounds. Every word of his 
short article is true; and, what is more, it is true in other fields than 
the Coccidz. Every week brings to our table descriptive literature 
in which “ new species”’ are founded upon the most trivial characters 
and new genera upon features of minor importance. 
Mesenchyme vs. Mesenchyma. — There seems to be a growing 
tendency among writers on embryological matters to employ the 
word mesenchyme to denote the indifferent tissue of the middle germ 
layer. The word is taken from the German mesenchym, but pro- 
nounced as if it were mesenkeim in German. Why not use mesen- 
chyma? It has good usage. It is not a foreign hybrid, and it 
belongs to a series of words that has been long in use, in botan- 
ical literature at least. We already have collenchyma, kenen- 
chyma, parenchyma, prosenchyma, and sclerenchyma— why not 
mesenchyma ? 
Shade Trees.— One of the most crying needs of our larger cities 
is a concerted and intelligent popular movement for the planting and 
preservation of street trees. No one in the United States has done 
more to stimulate such action than William R. Smith, and the Massa- 
chusetts Horticultural Society has done well to publish in its Zrans- 
actions for 1898 a lecture on the subject, delivered by him before the 
society in February, 1898. 
« Easy Science.” — The Great Round World, an excellent little 
juvenile newspaper, tells the children that a Siberian traveler has 
found a beautiful flower that blossoms in January, resembles the 
Convolvulus, a blossom lasting only a day, and on the third or 
fourth day has the ends of the fine anthers tipped with glistening 
diamond-like specks — the seeds. And this is called “ Easy 
Science.” 
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