134 
consideration are filled with chlorophyll, a coloring matter which, 
save rare exceptions, can be developed only under the influence of 
light of a certain intensity. 
Botanical Lilerature- 
Manual of the Botany {^Phanoga^nia and Pteridoph\ta) of the Rocky 
Mountain Regions^ from Ne%v Mexico to the British Boundary. 
By John M. Coulter, Ph.D. Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co.: 
New York and Chicago. 1885, 
This book will be gladly welcomed by western botanists, as well 
as by those of their eastern confreres who have had occasion to iden- 
tify western plants, and who know by experience how difficult it often 
is to obtain access to descriptions. The range of the work includes 
Colorado, AVyoming, Montana, Western Dakota, Western Nebraska 
and Western Kansas, the eastern boundary being very nearly repre- 
sented by the hundredth meridian. The greater portion of contigu- 
ous floras is also described, so that ''the western part of the Indian 
Territory, Northwestern Texas, Northern New Mexico and Arizona, 
and Eastern Utah and Idaho may be included for all except their own 
peculiar plants." This is a very wide range and embraces one of 
three regions west of the Mississippi Valley prairie country that 
possess well defined floras, the others being that of the Pacific slope, 
which is provided for in the Botany of California, and that which ex- 
tends from the Great Basin to Arizona, New Mexico, Western Texas, 
and southward into Mexico, and \vhich is found described partly in 
Mr. Watson's Botany of the Fortieth Parallel and partly in Dr. Roth- 
rock's Botany of the Wheeler Survey. 
As a general thing, Prof. Coulter follows the sequence of orders 
adopted by Bentham and Hooker, but he has transferred Gymno- 
sperms to the end of Ph^nogams, and has subordinated Monocotyled- 
ons and Dicotyledons to Angiosperms, as this, he remarks, better 
expresses relationships that have long been recognized. The old 
term "Cryptogam" has been discarded for that of Pteridophyta, and 
the classes and orders have been arranged under this series -in that 
sequence which the author thinks best expresses relationships. 
The descriptions of adventive plants are in all cases printed in 
smaller type and placed at the bottom of the page. 
In size, typography and general make up, the book is uniform 
with Dr. Gray's Manual. In view of the want that has long existed 
for a concise account of the flora of the Rocky Mountain region, in 
a convenient form for reference, we bespeak for Prof. Coulter's 
work a large sale, 
Les Procedes operatoires en Histologic Vegetale; Guide pour les Etudes 
de Microchimie, Par Louis Olivier. Paris: Savy. 1855. 
In this volume, Mr. Olivier has brought together in systematic 
order,from various scattered papers, descriptions of the most approved 
methods of preparing microchemical reagents, and the mode of apply- 
ing them to the study of plants. After pointing out how great a light is 
shed upon the minute anatomy of the tissues by the microchemical 
method, the author discusses the form, the structure, the contractility, 
