THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
19 
be glad to know that the magazine for 1906 will follow the 
usual standard. The articles on the flowering plant families 
will be continued, a frontispiece will appear in each issue, 
and the Note and Comment department will remain an im- 
portant feature. We solicit a continuance of contributed 
notes and longer articles from our readers. 
Look over your files and if any nimibers are missing 
later than Volume VII we shall be glad to supply them 
free. We can no longer make this offer for the earlier 
volumes, because recent orders have so reduced our stock 
that no single numbers are available. If any reader of this 
magazine has not a full set of the back numbers, he will 
later regret that he did not secure them while he could. 
A large proportion of our new subscribers order full sets 
from the beginning. This is especially true of libraries. 
If you do not care to own a full set, ask the nearest library 
to order one, so that you can refer to it when desired. 
When our stock is gone it will be too late. 
Last autumn The Garden Magazine announced that it 
would soon give a gold medal to the cultivator who first 
showed that it was possible to grow fringed gentians from 
seed. LTpon receipt of this notice we at once claimed the 
prize for Mr. J. Ford Sempers, of Aikin, Md.. who raised 
the plants from seed five years ago, and whose observations 
on their germination and growth have appeared at various 
times in the American BoT.AisrisT. In spite of this, the 
prize went to IVIr. Thomas Murray, of Tuxedo Park, N. Y., 
whose experiments did not begin until a year later than Mr. 
Sempers', and whose published results did not appear until 
Deconber, 1905. In fact, the successful work of Mr. 
Murray was not begtm, as appears from his account, until 
