468 The American I 



I botany today does not stop with the dis- 

 tribution of the wild flora. Cultivated plants, native useful 

 plants, weeds, and the flora of waste places come in for their 

 share of consideration and are treated in turn. The plants 

 whose seeds are mixed with those of cultivated plants and are 

 thus sowed and grown involuntarily are placed in the group 

 of cultivated plants. But a more important group is formed 

 by the species introduced and supported incidentally by the 

 cultivation and occupation of the soil by man. A notable in- 

 stance of this is a group of " saltpetre plants " due to the use 

 of nitrate fertilizers. 



It would become tedious to enumerate the many striking 

 features of the work and the ideas which they suggest. The 

 work is in some sort a summary of geographical botany as it 

 now stands. So much material necessarily takes on a new 

 aspect when brought together and digested, though we have 

 been more or less acquainted with a large part of it in its 

 scattered condition. As part of a whole, each fact seems some- 

 thing new. We may safely predict that a great impetus will 

 be given to this kind of botanical work in regions remote from 

 Germany by Dr. Drude's book, since it presents a practical 

 outline which will not fail to be taken advantage of. Our own 

 country furnishes many excellent opportunities which the 

 various biological and botanical surveys now in progress are 

 already beginning to seize. The example of such a geogra- 

 phico-botanical survey of a large country, on a large scale, will 

 be a great inspiration. 



Dr. Drude's book is most interesting reading, and as a com- 

 pendium of the latest results in a growing and important de- 

 partment, as well as in its more immediate purpose, is of the 

 ' highest value. 



EDITOK'S TABLE. 



The bestiarians are still actively engaged in endeavoring to prevent 

 humanitarians from prosecuting their good work of relieving human 

 disease and suffering. Their latest move is to endeavor to get national 

 legislation to suppress physiologic research by vivisection in the Dis- 



