20 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST, 



Galled a botanical compendium of the period during: 

 which it was published. Of these back volumes, there 

 are now less than two hundred sets remaining. It is 

 therefore certain that when it comes to complete files 

 somebody is going to get left. Don't be orie of the 

 number. The magazine is still so young that you can 

 afford to begin at the beginning. Let others pay 

 advanced prices for the early numbers when they want 

 to complete their files. 



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New subscribers are requested to remember, that this 

 jounral is not issued until after the middle of each month 

 in order that we may review the other scientific journals,, 

 most of which are published earlier. Some of our delays 

 in past numbers,, however, have been due to the printers 

 and having now made a change in this department we 

 expect the magazine to be issued on time in the future, 



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In the days when the 6th Edition of Gray^s Manual 

 was printed, there were supposed to be about fifteen species 

 of hawthorn {Cratsegus) in Eastern America, Now there 

 are said to be several hundred. We do not know the ex- 

 act number, having lost count somewhere in the third 

 hundred. Since there is a slight suspicion that these '^new 

 species'' may, after all, be only individuals, we respectfully 

 suggest that in order to avoid synonomy, each worker in 

 this genus be provided with a set of neat brass plates one 

 of which should be fastened to each tree as named. This 

 would not only avoid synonomy ; it would save time as 

 welL How discouraging it must be to wait a whole year 

 for a shrub to blossom in the hope that it may have nile 

 green anthers and therefore be new, only to find when the 

 flowers open, that its anthers were navy blue, turkey red^ 

 or some other color that had already been registered I 



