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every issue will be found strictly in accord with the best science. 

 The most satisfactory proof that The American Botanist is 

 appreciated, however, is found in the fact that as this third issue 

 goes to press, we have more subscribers on our list than the Plant 

 World had at the end of its second year! This ought to be suf- 

 ficient for our critics. 



It is well known that the late Grant Allen was a naturalist 

 long before he was a novelist ; but he soon found that writing on 

 natural history subjects did not pay financially, and turned his at- 

 tention to more lucrative fields. Notwithstanding the change in 

 his subject-matter he always had a fondness for the real natural 

 history and a fine contempt for the hair-splitting scientist who 

 works for glory rather than for love of his subject. His opinions 

 upon this point are constantly cropping out even in his novels. In 

 "The Tents of Shem," he makes one of his characters say: 

 "There are two kinds of naturalists, you know. The superior 

 class live in London or Paris, examine everything minutely with 

 a big microscope, tack on inches of Greek nomenclature to an in- 

 significant mite or bit of moss and split hairs against anybody 

 with marvellous dexterity. That's science. It dwells in a 

 museum. For my part I detest it. The inferior class live in 

 Europe, Asia, Africa or America, as fate or fancy carries, and 

 instead of looking at everything in a dried specimen, go out into 

 the woods with rifle on shoulder or box in hand and observe the 

 birds, the beasts and green things of the earth, as God made them, 

 in their own natural and lovely surroundings. That's natural 

 history, old-fashioned, simple, common-place natural history, and 

 I for my part am an old-fashioned naturalist." This expresses 

 the matter very nicely and will no doubt appeal to many who de- 

 light simply to wander among the flowers without a care for the 

 long names by which the scientist knows them. 



— A Laboratory Manual of Elementary Biology, by Prof. 

 F. D. Heald, of Parson's College, is to be issued in September. 



