G. L. WALTON, M. D. 

 199 MARLBOROUGH STREET, 

 BOSTON, 



jaarch 21, 1914. 



Mr. Walter Deane , 



29 Brewster Street , 



Cambridge , lass • 



Dear Mr. Dean: 



I am delighted to receive your letter and to find you 

 have taken such pains to see if my fcook is any good for the purpose 

 for which it is intended. I have "been over it a good many times 

 myself in the same way and have experimented with others who know 

 even less botany than I do, and have been rather surprised to see 

 how many flowers they could find quickly. Up to this time I have 

 made a list of about forty flowers, however, with which there is 

 more or less delay and uncertainty, generally because of doubt as 

 to color, but occasionally as to other characteristics. "For example, 

 I found a tendency to call the Podophyllum peltatum opposite- 

 leaved; the same was true of the Erythronium americanum, when the 

 blade of the leaves left their sheathes pretty high up. Again, 

 one is apt to mistake the sepals of Caltha palustris and of Coptis 

 trifolia for petals, overlooking my caution regarding this on pp. 

 60 and 112. I am preparing, however, an appendix, which contains 

 reduced cuts of these forty flowers, with their various colors, 

 their English names and the page on which they are to be found. 

 I am taking at the same time the opportunity to put in abo\;t ten 

 flowers which I had previously omitted, for example, Lysimachia 

 thyrsifolia, Polygonella articulata, Radicula Armoracia, Hydrastis 

 canadensis, Apocynum cannabium, Arisaemia Dracontium, TTottonia 

 inf lata , Sparganium simplex , Radicula Nasturtiiua-aquaticum and 

 Sagittaria graminea . In accordance with your observation, I 

 shall add Vitis labrusca . 



Of course I am assuming a good deal to suppose that the 

 demand for the book will be sufficient to require this appendix, 

 but we have to be prepared for good fortune as well as bad. 



The press notices are very favorable, but I suppose they 

 are not always written by botanists, so that it is particularly 

 pleasing to me to have a real botanist pass on it as an aid to the 

 uninitiated and as an incitement to further study. 



Yours very truly, 



P.S. T neglected to state that in the Important Precautions at the 

 beginning I shall add this one, in case the new edition ever material- 

 izes: "Failing to find a flower by the charts, look through the 

 pictures in the appendix." 



