EDITORIAL. 
Everyone who reads these lines has one or more friends who 
love flowers and are therefore interested in articles on the subject. 
\\'e want their addresses in order to send them sample copies of 
this journal. A postal card is all it will cost our readers and it 
will be a great favor to us. But leaving this last consideration 
out of the question, is there anyone who will not invest a single 
cent in good literature for his friends, ^^'e think not. Remem- 
ber, the more names the better. 
The segregation and description of new species has pro- 
gressed so rapidly in recent years that the student who got his in- 
formation from the old "^Manuals" is quite perplexed upon taking 
up recent works. Instead of the old familiar names he often finds 
from two to a dozen segregates, with strange titles, occupying 
their places. While it is admitted that botanical science moves 
with the rest of the world, it is the opinion of nearly all thinking 
botanists, that this species making has been rather overdone and 
that the time is not far distant when many so-called species will be 
relegated to their proper places as forms or varieties of the species 
we have long known. In commenting upon this idea before the 
Botanical Society of America, Dr. B. L. Robinson said recently : 
*'It is easy to see that species as now recorded in literature are by 
no means alike and that they cannot be regarded as equivalents in 
any complete and logical system of classification. Curiously 
enough, however, the term 'species' seems to be growing more and 
more popular as it means less and less. How anxious most dis- 
coverers of new forms are that their plants may prove species, not 
mere varieties and finally what a fascination the mere binomial 
appears to exert upon certain minds ! Is it any wonder, under 
these circumstances, that the specific category has been over- 
crowded and made to include such widely different elements that 
the word species has lost nearly all its taxonomic significance?" 
Dr. Robinson asserts that species must be re-classified along 
more definite lines. What these lines are no one presumes to say 
at present. It is probable that they will differ somewhat in dif- 
ferent groups, but a species will ultimately come to possess about 
