From the Final Report of the State Geologist, Trenton. Pp. 642. This great catalogue is said by the author to be "the most complete enumeration of plants of any region of as great area in the world. In fact, no such systematic study of a flora has hitherto been attempted. " It is gratifying to know that this greatest effort has been perfected in America, where botany is supposed to be less developed than in European countries. The projectors of the work have been bold and comprehensive in their plans from the first, and a preliminary catalogue was issued under the same auspices a few years ago which was itself more voluminous probably than any American catalogue in existence at that time. Dr. Britton and his collaborators have labored with unusual fidelity for many years.

The catalogue comprises an enumeration of all plants - fungi, algae, lichens, liverworts, mosses, etc., as well as the flowering plants. The total species and varieties reported in the state, an area of 8,224 square miles, are 5,641, distributed as follows: flowering plants, 1,919; pteridophytes (ferns, club-mosses, scouring-rushes, etc.), 76; bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and charas), 461; thallophytes (lichens, algae and fungi), 3,021; proto-phytes, 164.

An excellent feature of the catalogue is the enumerations of "forms," or minor variations of plants. This is the first important step in this country toward the compilation of material for the study of plant variation. These forms are commonly considered unworthy of notice, or at least of record by most botanists, but they are, in some aspects, the most important objects in systematic botany. These forms include all conspicuous variations in colors of flowers and habits of plant which are not sufficiently marked or constant to be supposed to merit varietal names. This catalogue is also the exponent in this country of the extreme revolutionism in plant nomenclature. Between this extreme and the extreme conversatism, which is also promulgated in this country - both of which are equally unfortunate, it seems to us - the botanical laity cannot find standing ground.