518 



Scientific Intelligence. 



III. Botany. 



1. Gray's New Manual of Botany. A Handbook of the 

 Flowering Plants and Fern's of the Central and North-eastern 

 United States and Canada. Rearranged and extensively revised 

 by Benjamin Lincoln Robinson, Asa Gray Professor of System- 

 atic Botany, and Merritt Lyndon Fernald, Assistant Professor 

 of Botany, in Harvard University. Pp. 926. New York, 1908. 

 (American Book Company.) —Sixty years have elapsed since 

 the first edition of Gray's Manual of Botany was published. 

 From time to time during that long period the treatise has 

 received careful editorial attention, and necessary additions have 

 been incorporated. Under the limitations of stereotyped pages, 

 some of these additions have been, of course, rather unwelcome, 

 and have found their place sometimes in supplementary pages of 

 new issues. The last thorough revision before the present one 

 was undertaken after Professor Gray's death. The work was 

 very satisfactorily done by the late Dr. Sereno Watson and by 

 Professor J. M. Coulter. Numerous important changes were 

 made after the most careful deliberation, and the decisions proved 

 acceptable to the majority of working botanists. But in the eigh- 

 teen years which have passed since the publication of that sixth 

 edition, great advances have been made all along the line in 

 Systematic Botany, and it has been obvious that a new edition of 

 the Manual is imperatively demanded. For some years this revis- 

 ion has been in progress at the Herbarium, where the first edition 

 was prepared. The Curator of the Gray Herbarium, Professor 

 Robinson, and his aid, Professor Fernald, have given to the task 

 a great part of their time and the most loving care. Serious 

 difficulties confronted them. In the first place, the accumulation 

 of material of late has gone on with a rapidity which threatened 

 to carry the size of the volume beyond the limits of convenience, 

 so that it could not longer be called properly a " handbook." But 

 by the exercise of much skill, the revisers have kept the book 

 within reasonable bounds, and have given it essentially the form 

 and size of the sixth edition. The second serious difficulty con- 

 sisted in the absolute necessity of bringing order out of the cha- 

 otic condition of nomenclature. This order has been measurably 

 secured by a consistent adherence to the Vienna agreement, which 

 is justly acknowledged as International instead of provincial. 

 But the synonyms which have found a place in other systems have 

 here been placed within reach of the student. This part of the 

 work has obviously demanded the exercise of the greatest care, 

 and this it has received. 



A third difficulty, promptly met, was the complete change, 

 amounting almost to inversion, in the sequence of the natural 

 families. This change has grown out of a recognition of affinities 

 between plants, which compels a general re arrangement. It is 

 perhaps not loo much to say that such a re-arrangement would 

 have been unwise in 1890 when Drs. Watson and Coulter issued 



Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



510 



the sixth edition ; it would manifestly have been unwise to fail 

 to make this change to-day. 



Many extremely perplexing questions of a minor character have 

 been well and skilfully met by the authors of the present revision. 

 One of these is the selection of illustrative helps. These are 

 incorporated in the body of the page, and are not too numerous to 

 be confusing. Phey are, for the most part, excellent and telling. 

 Another difficulty, and the last to which we shall now refer, was 

 the discrimination between forms in polymorphic genera where, 

 such differences can be made to appear as specific instead of 

 varietal. _ Ihe multiplying of these forms under the name of spe- 

 cies has introduced a question of the first magnitude. Of course 

 one cannot expect to satisfy everybody even by compromises' 

 but such compromises seem to be demanded now and then The 

 revisers, who may well be called the authors of the present 

 edition of Gray's Manual, have shown great ability in managing 

 these perplexing matters, and are to be congratulated on then- 

 success. 



G. I.. G. 



