72 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
There is just one way to get a nomenclature for American 
plants that will not change and that is to adopt a set of names 
by agreement. Let the Harvard University men issue that 
new edition of Gray's Manual that we all know is being in- 
cubated and let them issue it in comformity with the Vienna 
Code. And then let us call a halt to name changing. Let us 
adopt the names there used and let us stick to them no matter 
how many musty names are subsequently exhumed at New 
York and Washington. All we ask is for a collection of vow- 
els and consonants that will forever represent a certain species. 
To adopt the course outlined above would deprive a lot of 
"botanists" of an occupation, but it would advance real botany 
immensely and that is what we are after. And now, shall it 
be Sassafras V ariif oliiim or shall it be Sassafras Sassafras 
officinale f 
BOOKS AND WRITERS. 
The publishers of Parsons' "Wildflowers of California" 
inform us that the stock and plates of this work were all 
destroyed in the fire that followed the San Francisco earth- 
quake. It is to be hoped that another edition may be brought 
out. 
In order to meet a more popular demand, the publishers of 
Mrs. Elisabeth Hallowell Saunder's publication of color 
prints of ''California Wild Flowers", recently noticed in these 
columns, have issued a special edition this autumn, consisting 
of two sets of six flowers each, instead of the one set of a 
dozen flowers as originally. The sets of six retail at 50 cents, 
and may be had by mail from Sanborn, Vail & Co., Los 
Angeles, California. 
