826 The American Naturalist. [October, 
(1) A list of North American Pteridophyta and Spermatophyta be 
prepared for publication. 
(2) A supplement be prepared to the present List of Pteridophyta 
and Spermatophyta of the Northeastern United States. 
(3) The Rochester-Madison Rules be republished with annotations 
and explanations. 
The officers for the next year are: President, S. M. Tracy, Agricul- 
tural College, Miss.; Vice-President, L. R. Jones, Burlington, Vt. ; 
Secretary-Treasurer, E. Burgess, New York. 
A New Manual of Systematic Botany.’—It is many years 
since American botanists have had the pleasure of examining a new 
manual of systematic botany designed for use in the northeastern States. 
We have had new editions of old books, but, unfortunately for scien- 
tific progress, through a remarkable misconception of the duties of ex- 
ecutors, these editions were new mainly in type and binding, the addi- 
tions and modifications having been purposely reduced to a minimum. 
It has been a matter of profound regret on the part of many of the 
friends and admirers of Dr. Gray that his books should receive such a 
treatment as to prematurely relegate them to the list of antiquated and 
obsolescent works. A new manual is, therefore, of peculiar interest at 
the present time, and this interest is enhanced by the fact that it comes 
from the scientific home of the older botanist, Torrey. 
The volume before us is the first of the three volumes which will in- 
clude descriptions and figures of all the ferns and flowering plants of 
the northeastern States and Canada. It is in every way a new work— 
new in its plan, new in its descriptions, new in its illustrations. Vol- 
ume I opens with an eight-page introduction which is historical and 
explanatory. Here we learn that more than 4,000 species will be in- 
cluded, and that nearly three-fourths of these will be figured for the first 
time. Discussions follow on the principles of classification of plants, and 
the systematic arrangement adopted in the work (Engler and Prantl’s). 
The following quotations are useful and suggestive: “The Nineteenth 
Century closes with the almost unanimous scientific judgment that the 
order of nature is an order of evolution and development from the more 
2 An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British 
Possessions from Newfoundland tothe Parallel of the Southern Boundary of Vir- 
ginia, and from the Atlantic Ocean Westward to the 102d Meridian. By 
Nathaniel Lord Britton, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Botany in Columbia Uni- 
versity, and Director-in-Chief of the New York Botanical Garden, and Hon, Ad- 
dison Brown, President of the Torrey Botanical Club. Vol. I, Ophioglossaceae 
to Aizoaceae. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 612 pages, octavo, $3.00. 
