100 Bhodors “(Max 
A new BOTANICAL TEXTBOOK FoR Hic ScHoots.— Botany now 
occupies at least in the secondary schools of New England and New 
York, a rather precarious place in the course of study. Reaction 
against the formal morphology and systematic botany of the older 
texts, and the excessive experimentation required by more recent 
authors, has ‘in many schools crowded botany as such out of the 
course, and it occupies with zodlogy and physiology, a scant third 
of the freshman or sophomore year of “biology.” A book like Allen 
and Gilbert’s new text! ought to revive interest in the science as a 
matter of practical everyday education for everyone, especially in 
rural, village and suburban schools. 
Simple and for the most part familiar types are studied for thirteen 
chapters, outlining the great divisions of plant life. The cucumber 
with its monoecious flowers comes first, thus giving the idea of sex 
and fertilization clearly at the start. These chapters are not so 
elaborate nor so scientific as those which correspond in Atkinson’s 
Botany for High Schools, but they are much better adapted for young 
students. 
Five chapters are given to the morphology and uses of roots, stems, 
leaves, flowers and fruits. The remaining six chapters deal largely 
with economic botany, including forestry, plant breeding and plant- 
diseases. Laboratory and field work is carefully planned for each 
chapter, but it is printed at the end of the book where it does not 
interfere with the obvious readability of the text. 
Instead of giving a mutilated key to the flora, with a small num- 
ber of species listed and no ranges given, the authors urge the students 
to use the accepted manuals for various parts of the country. 
Much is said incidentally in regard to plant relations to environ- 
ment, but the book would be considerably stronger if these facts 
were summed up in a good chapter on ecology, even at the expense of 
condensation in the economic chapters. 
The authors have with clearness and ease given the latest scientific 
conclusions about plant life and growth. They have been successful 
in keeping down the number of technical terms to a minimum. The 
book is worthy of the attention of the general reader, as well as of the 
High School student and teacher.— Crarence H. Knowuron. 
1 TexrsBooKk oF Botany. By Charles E. Allen and Edward M. Gilbert. pp. 450 +x, 
illustrated. Cloth, $1.48. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. f 
Vol. 20, no. 232, including pages 61 to 80, was issued 9 April, 1918. 
