EDITORIAL. 



The editor has been away from home during the past school 

 year and matters not requiring his special attention have been 

 attended to at Binghamton, as usual. If any subscriber, however, 

 has failed to receive the numbers as issued, or any contributor 

 has failed to receive extra numbers containing his article the edi- 

 tor invites them to inform him of the fact in order that matters 

 may be set right. We do not look upon the publication of this 

 journal as a matter of mere dollars and cents. The editor is 

 personally acquainted with perhaps a third of the entire list of 

 subscribers and feels that he knows many of the other through 

 correspondence ; therefore he has a certain interest in their hav- 

 ing full files of the magazine and being otherwise satisfied. If 

 your magazine fails to reach you, let us know. We are glad to 

 replace free any copies lost in the mails. 



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There is no use denying the fact : the output of technical 

 matter relating to North American ferns is decreasing. Ten or 

 fifteen years ago, the ferns were considered to be fairly well 

 known and not until the advent of the Fern Chapter and the 

 Fern Bulletin with their facilities for stimulating the study of 

 ferns, was this branch of botany much in evidence. That the 

 impetus thus given the study was of no small consequence may 

 be inferred from the fact that before the appearance of the Fern 

 Bulletin there was not a single popular manual on ferns in 

 America and now there are no less than eight volumes that cover 

 the ground more or less satisfactorily, while the number of new 

 species, varieties and forms that have been since discovered and 

 described has been most astonishing. 



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With the issuing of these books the fern-loving and fern- 

 studying public has been greatly increased and as a result our 

 ferns are probably as well known as those of Europe. The range 

 of nearly all can be defined with exactness, their time of fruiting 

 is well known and their habitats so familiar that a good fern- 



