192 Recent Literature. [ZOE 
universities and colleges, we feel the more at liberty to discuss 
in how far it is to be recommended as a suitable dictionary for the 
study of botany. 
It appears, only too clearly upon careful examination, that 
the author of the present work has not possessed full knowledge 
of any of the many botanical lines which were supposed to be 
represented by modern or old terms in this book. 
The literary part of the work has not been done carefully, 
and the definitions of the various terms are very poor, and 
absolutely incorrect in many cases. What we hoped to find was 
not only an explanation of the words themselves, when taken 
from foreign languages, their derivation for instance, but also 
their true signification in botany, as they have been or are still 
applied by different authors. But in this respect the book does 
not give much information, indeed it seems as if the whole 
subject has been treated more like a mere compilation without 
criticism rather than representing the result of literary research 
and original investigation. 
It is very unsafe to quote terms from a single article without 
trying to find out by original and confirmatory investigations 
what it really means. Instead of finding a uniformity in terms, 
as applied for instance to a series of homologous organs, we find 
often great confusion. In many cases the terms themselves are 
not correctly defined, besides a number of quite common ones 
are entirely overlooked. 
By considering the morphological terms it is striking to see, 
that the most essential points are often not given, and it seems 
necessary to give a few citations: 
*‘Cotyledon’”’ is said to be ‘‘the first leaf or leaves of a 
plant; ’’ we wonder if this also applies to Cryptogames ? 
‘““Nut” is defined as being ‘‘the fruit of certain trees and 
shrubs, consisting of a hard shell enclosing the seed.’’ The 
principal characteristic, that a nut is indehiscent, is omitted. 
‘“‘Nutlet’”’ is ‘‘a small nut, or nutlike seed or fruit as many 
achenia.” We doubt whether it has ever been applied to seeds. — 
‘Paraphyses’’ are defined as ‘‘sterile filaments,” while a 
filament is defined as ‘‘ the stalk of an anther.” 
“Utriculus” is referred to ‘‘utricle”’ as being ‘‘a fruit with 
