32 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 
— At the beginning- of the year TJie Forester and National Irri- 
gation joined forces and will henceforth be published as one jour- 
nal under the title of Forestry and Irrigation. 
— With its fourth number, California Floriculturist, of Los 
Angeles, has been considerably increased in size, a pleasing indi- 
caticai that this bright Western journal is prospering. 
— We regret to note that a fire on the night of January 14th, de- 
stroyed the building and collections of the Manchester Institute of 
Arts and Sciences. The Institute's journal, Nature Study, suf- 
fered some loss, but appears on time as usual. 
— It is but a comparatively short time ago that one who desired 
to make the acquaintance of our native flowers without an instruc- 
tor to introduce him, found it an exceedingly diflicult matter. A 
stubborn and persistent student might at last conquer a botanical 
text book, but to the great majority the scientific phraseology was 
too forbidding and the book might as well have been written in 
Chinese. We owe a vast debt of gratitude to the makers of the 
Manuals who amassed and recorded the botanical facts; but it 
may be questioned whether our debt to those later writers, who^ 
by popular books, have opened this storehouse of knowledge to 
the general public is not still greater. Books of a popular nature 
are now so plentiful and approach the subject from so many dif- 
ferent sides that the beginner can scarcely go astray. Even if 
he misses the way in one book, another will set him right. One 
of the best of these botanical gaiide-posts is "A Guide to the Wild- 
flowers," by Alice Lounsberry, published by the F. A. Stokes 
Company of New York. This treats of our wild flowers accord- 
ing to the kind of soil they inhabit, and describes nearly five hun- 
dred plants. Its value is further enhanced by sixty-four full page 
. colored plates and one hundred more in black and white by Mrs. 
Ellis Rowan, which show about two hundred of the typical plants 
described. The book is an octavo and costs $2.75. 
