It is pleasant to note with each recurrent year, an improvement in this government publication. For, good as they have been of late years, we regard this as the most valuable ever issued. There is a more clear perception that the peculiar mission of the department is to give information that only a government can supply - and that this information should be given with scientific precision and absolute accuracy. We do not want to read over and over again what has appeared in every penny newspaper. Horticulturists generally will turn with some interest to the newly established Department of Pomology. They must remember that the volume closes with 1886 and that the pomologist had little time to study the bearings of the leading matters of interest in the field before him. Yet it is evident that he can make the division as useful as the others, as soon as he has become accustomed to the position.

In these publications which are for all the world and for all time, the incumbents learn to be careful of their statements. We suppose, if written now, after a year's additional experience, the pomologist would not say as he did in 1886, "It is now well proven that the Blackman plum is a hybrid between the peach and the plum, and like many hybrids, is sterile." In the light of modern experience, it would be difficult for the pomologist to name the "many hybrids" that are sterile - for, as in the case of the Blackman plum, the so called "sterile hybrids," are not known to be hybrids, but the fact of sterility has been taken to prove the hybridity, which is just no proof at all.

Neither. we think, would the pomologist now write: " The Japan persimmon is unlike our native species in that its flowers are perfect - that is, have stamens and pistils in one flower - while ours has the two sexes on different trees".

There is really no difference in this respect between the two species. Both are polygamous instead of dioecious and it is not at all uncommon to have trees of our species perfectly hermaphrodite; on the other hand, in their wild condition, the Japan species have the sexes separate as often as ours - and even in the forms that have been selected for cultivation, and are perpetuated by grafting, the flowers are often unisexual. The writer has seen a tree of the variety known as Yanesi, in which no flower could be found with a perfect stamen, though the fact that the tree brought forth two persimmons that year, showed that there may have been at least two flowers perfect.

We mention these points, not so much for the purpose of criticism on an exceedingly valuable report - but to express a hope that by particular accuracy they may be rendered still more valuable.