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EDITOKIAL.
The present seems a fitting opportunity to indicate one or two
changes which will be made in this Journal in the coming year.
We have nothing sensational to announce, no startling improvements
to advertise. Our scope is limited, our aims are humble, though
useful ; and the way in which they are carried out must mainly
depend, as it always has depended, upon the kind and willing
co-operation of those to whom the Journal owes whatever success
it may have attained—a co-operation which was never more valuable
and readily accorded than at the present time.
Although botanists may now be congratulated on the possession
of another publication devoted to their interests, supported by an
eminent and influential staff of writers, and financed in a manner
which permits the production of elaborate and expensively illustrated
memoirs, the Journal of Botany still remains the only medium of
communication in England which appears at regular intervals, and
in which immediate publication can be secured. It is, moreover,
the recognised record for matters relating to British Botany in its
various aspects and branches, and for the placing on record of
observations, too small in themselves to attract the notice of the
more profound student, but nevertheless worthy of note :
the number
of systematic papers published in its pages may also be referred to
with satisfaction. The ' Annals of Botany,' with its high subscription
rate and irregular issue, does not aim at filling the humbler, but we
hope not less useful, position, which we have striven—not unsuccess-
fully, we trust—to fill; and this is shown by the fact that our
subscribers have increased rather than diminished in number during
the last four years.
One conspicuous feature of this Journal some years since was
the "Botanical News," in which were recorded small matters, often
of passing interest, such as come within the ken of those in constant
intercourse with fellow-botanists and botanical literature : this we
propose to restore. We also intend to publish, as early in the year
as possible, a short notice—on the lines of the 'Biographical List,'