No. 378.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 453 
sixteen pages each issue, and illustrated by full-page plates. It will deal 
primarily with the flora of New England, especial attention being given to 
rare plants, extended ranges of distribution, and newly introduced, as well 
as newly described, species. Articles have been already promised by many 
of the foremost New England botanists, both professional and amateur, and 
while a high standard will be maintained in the matter of scientific accuracy, 
needless technicality of style will be carefully avoided, so that any person 
who can use Gray’s Manual will be able to read the proposed journal 
with pleasure and interest. Not only the flowering plants and ferns, but 
fleshy fungi and other cryptogams will receive attention. The price of the 
journal has been fixed at one dollar per annum. 
While more than two hundred subscriptions have already been promised 
in ‘advance, the Club does not feel warranted in proceeding with its plan of 
publication unless assured of much further support. All persons interested 
in botany and in the maintenance of such a journal in New England are 
earnestly solicited to send at once subscriptions for at least one year (which, 
however, need not be paid before January 15, 1899) to 
EDWARD L. RAND, 
Corresponding Secretary N. E. Botanical Club, 
740 Exchange Building, Boston, Mass. 
It may seem remarkable that with the many existing botanical 
periodicals it should be thought necessary to establish new ones, but 
it is clear that the journal here contemplated will be devoted to a 
field not at present cultivated by any existing periodical, namely, the 
local flora of New England. The journal will, doubtless, be largely 
Systematic, and will attempt to do for New England what such 
periodicals as the Deutsche Botanische Monatschrift, Gésterreichische 
Botanische Zeitschrift, etc., have long done so admirably for the 
European regions they cover. In the present enthusiasm for histology, 
cytology, cecology, and vegetable physiology, it is not uncommon for 
a botanical student to plunge into structural problems of extreme 
technicality without adequate systematic training to give him a 
Proper sense of proportion in his work. To know well the different 
groups of some one local flora is not only in itself a great source of 
pleasure, but is a most excellent preparation for subsequent histo- 
logical or physiological study. There is, furthermore, a great deal 
still to do upon the systematic botany of New England. Some of the 
most common species of plants are proving themselves to be puzzling 
aggregates of closely related forms, each of which must be studied 
Separately before its proper status and exact distribution can be 
learned. The flora is constantly changing, through the extermination 
