EDITORIAL. 



When the Fern Bulletin enters its tenth volume 

 A LOOK which will be next January, it is planned to in- 



ahead crease its size by the addition of eight more 



pages. This is rendered necessary by the unpre- 

 cedented activity among fern students. For lack of space we have 

 constantly to hold matter that should be published. Eight more 

 pages will make room for a large number of these timely articles. 

 With this increase in size we shall raise the subscription price to 

 75 cents a year. Our original purpose was to make the increase 

 in size without an increase in price, but the cost of all the mater- 

 ials used by the printer has recently risen so much that this is 

 impossible. We shall therefore try the experiment of raising the 

 subscription price, for one year at least, beginning October ist. 

 This advance need trouble none of our present subscribers, how- 

 ever, for we shall continue to receive renewals and subscriptions 

 at the 50 cent rate for any number of years in advance until the 

 October number is issued. Several important features will be 

 added to the new volume and it is hoped that all our present sub- 

 scribers will orler it. 



* * 



That is a significant paragraph of Prof. Under- 

 NO wood's book in which he says: '* The question of 



stability the proper use of botanical names is by no means 



a simple one. The botanical literature of the 

 world must be ransacked before stability can be reached. An 

 obscure local publication in the Italian language, on the plants 

 of Sicily, in this case furnishes the generic name for a plant 

 which grows in the Northeastern States." (This refers to the 

 proposal to substitute Melteuccia of Todaro for Struthiopteris). 

 When botanists realize the full import of this statement, many 

 will, no doubt, cease chasing will-o'-the-wisps and return to the 

 solid ground of conservative nomenclature. The stability to be 

 gained by absolute priority, proves to be instability itself. If 

 we are not to have stability until all the obscure local botanical 

 publications in the world are ransacked, the case is indeed hope- 

 less. No matter how painstaking a student may be — no matter 

 how carefully he has gone hunting in the shades of obscurity for 

 buried fern names— the day after his work is published, another 

 botanist who took a different path through these same shades 



