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Was it not Henry Ward Beecher who said that if a 

 man owned a fine diamond with a flaw in it so small as 

 to be perceived by nobody else, yet he would not 

 thoroughly enjoy its possession because of the flaw that 

 he knew was there? Anyway, none of us want posses- 

 sions with flaws in them if it can be helped, and most of 

 us are willing when we can to remove the flaws from the 

 possessions of others when it does not cost us too much. 

 The opportunity to be benevolent in this way we now 

 offer to our readers, for we know of three sets of The 

 Fern Bulletin, each of which lacks but a single number 

 to be flawless, and which might easily be made complete 

 if the holders of these numbers will only part with them. 

 The set of Mr. Chas. W. Jenks, Bedford, Mass., lacks 

 No. 3 of the first volume, Miss Annie Morrill Smith, 78 

 Orange St., Brooklyn, N. Y., lacks No. 1 of volume 4, 

 and Mr. B. D. Gilbert lacks No. 1 of volume 4. The 

 owners of these sets will gladly pay a good price for these 

 numbers, but if your own set is complete, do not break 

 it, for a full set of Fern Bulletin is so rare that its 

 value is increasing very rapidly. And we shall never 

 impair it by reprinting the early numbers. There are or 

 were, three hundred copies of each of these early num- 

 bers about, and it is not too much to hope that some of 

 them may yet come on the market. With many, the case 

 may be as we found it with a subscriber for the early 

 numbers who finally dropped his subscription. Thinking 

 he might be willing to part with the numbers, we made a 

 cash offer for them and received the reply that he had a 

 full set, but would not sell them to anybody. In addition 

 to the numbers wanted which we have noted above, Prof. 

 W. A. Setchell, of the University of California, Berkeley, 

 California, wants Vol. 5, No. 1, and many of the earlier 

 numbers, for which he is willing to pay a liberal price, 

 and Prof. George F. Atkinson, Cornell University, Ithaca, 

 N. Y., needs many of the numbers previous to Vol. 5. 

 Two other wants in this line are to be noted among the 

 advertisements. The trouble is that when those first 

 small numbers appeared, nobody thought The Fern 



