EDITORIAL. 
The editor has ended his extended stay in the South, and once 
more among his books and speciniens, is endeavoring to catch up 
with a sadly neglected correspondence. The interruption due to 
changing locations is responsible for the lateness of this issue. 
Future numbers will be out on time as usual. 
A writer in the Botanical Gazette, reviewing Prof Britton's 
Manual expresses himself as follows regarding the place the 
books is likely to occupy : 'Tor the first time, we have a manual 
presentation of the idea of species applied to the ultimate recogniz- 
able segregates of plants. It is now to be tested whether those of 
ordinary training and experience can determine species in this new 
sense, or whether the use of a manual must now pass out of the 
reach of amateurs and be restricted to specialists. For example, 
can an amateur distinguish the 43 species of Viola found in Brit- 
ton's Manual as he can 18 species found in Gray's Manual; or the 
13 pieces of Sisyrinchiiim and the 15 species O'f Antennaria found 
in the former, as he can two and one species of the latter?" 
If by amateur the writer means the novice or beginner the an- 
swer to his query is that he most certainly cannot. And the fact 
that he cannot is much tO' be deplored. The line between the bot- 
anist and the botanizer is beginning to be drawn with no good ef- 
fects upon science that are apparent. In earlier days the ranks of 
the professional botanists were largely augmented by those who 
had first taken up botany as a pastime, but the advent of the new 
botany has rendered such proceedings obsolete and impossible. 
The person who is attracted to botany by the marvellous in plant 
life, the amateur, will now take down his Gray's Manual and go 
on browsing through field and wood to the end of time, while in 
a college herbarium will sit the embryo' professionals, surrounded 
by miscroscopes, scalpels, dusty volumes and dead plants, conning 
the minute differences which distinguish one so-called species 
from another. It is the tendency of the times and not to be stayed 
by any protest; but one cannot help wishing that instead of calling 
