38 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



we would be inclined to report that the fellow that sowed tares 

 with the wheat is again in the land. 



A friend of the magazine has called our attention to the 

 fact that the twelve-volume set of books describing the works 

 of Luther Burbank which we mentioned in a recent issue have 

 actually been issued for some time, are beautifully printed and 

 illustrated, and apparently well edited. We are not disposed 

 to misrepresent the efforts of anybody tO' improve our plants 

 and hasten to make this correction, though still of the opinion 

 that the results of Burbank's work have been greatly overesti- 

 mated. We shall hunt up a set of those books as soon as pos- 

 sible and discover for ourselves whether the volumes are as 

 accurate as regards the facts as a work of this kind ought tO' be, 

 the pages we have seen having given us some doubts on the 

 score. Our informant, however, is one of the country's most 

 erudite botanists and what he says usually goes. 



BOOKS AND WRITERS 



Mr. W. H. Blanchard, 5 Guernsey Ave., Montpelier, Vt , 

 is desirous of notes on blackberries from the Southern States. 

 Mr. Blanchard holds the world's championship for blackberry- 

 ing since in the pursuit of his hobby he has followed on foot 

 the zone of ripening blackberries from Arkansas well into 

 Canada and has described more new species from New Eng- 

 land and adjacent territory than the manual makers supposed 

 grew in all America. Several of his new species have been de- 

 scribed, in this magazine. Our readers living in the South 

 should correspond with Mr. Blanchard. There may be a lot 

 of new species in their own locality and if so Blanchard is the 

 man to discover it. 



The publishers of Underwood's "Our Native Ferns" in- 

 form us that the work will not be reissued since the last edition 



