35 o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



editors of botanical journals as original contributions to that science is original 

 only to the authors who have failed to make themselves familiar with the literature 

 of their subject — though this particular fault is perhaps more conspicuous in 

 foreign than in British work ; but it is about time to realise the fact that British 

 workers have played a very important part in the making of modern botany, and 

 have, indeed, as is freely admitted by unprejudiced experts in other lands, con- 

 tributed a considerable majority of the publications that count for most in the 

 progress of a science, namely, such as have led to the overturning of previously 

 accepted views and have opened up new lines of investigation. In many cases, 

 characteristically enough, it has been left to workers in other countries to pursue 

 these lines and fill in the details, incidentally gaining credit for much more than 

 this, and too often ignoring and even disparaging the pioneer labours which made 

 their own possible. 



The present volume is divided into eight " books," dealing with fairly natural 

 periods into which the history of botany in this country may be divided. The first 

 is concerned with the herbalists, whose works are too often regarded as a source 

 of quaint quotations upon which silly compilers of popular books about plants may 

 draw in order to eke out their blend of misinformation, bits of poetry, and pictures. 

 As the author points out in the course of his account of the beginnings of botany, 

 it was from the chaotic mixture of magic, astrology, and the healing arts that 

 botanical science slowly emerged, and the foundation of modern botany was laid 

 by the herbalists as they successively discarded first superstition and then the 

 connection between botany and medicine, and began to study and classify plants, 

 and herbals gave place to floras. The chief periods dealt with in the remaining 

 "books" include the age of Gray, Morison, and Grew ; the period dominated by 

 the Linnaean system of classification, and by the founding of plant physiology 

 in the eighteenth century (it is hardly an exaggeration to claim that plant 

 physiology is essentially a British science) ; the revival of the natural system of 

 classification, heralded by the brilliant work of Robert Brown and closing with 

 the tremendous modern revival which followed the publication of The Origin of 

 Species, and set in motion the " wave of progress " to which is devoted the last 

 " book," bringing the story down to the end of the nineteenth century. 



In this unique book the author has brought together and presented with his 

 usual great literary skill an enormous mass of material, representing the result of 

 many years of research in the field which he had so thoroughly and peculiarly 

 made his own, and which, indeed, but for his labours had remained practically 

 untouched. British botany could have found no abler or more reliable historian, 

 and it is safe to assert that the story here presented will be read by generations of 

 botanists who wish to learn something of the debt which modern botany owes to 

 the labours of British workers from the herbalists of the sixteenth century onwards. 



F. Cavers. 



The Evolution of Sex in Plants. By John Merle Coulter. [Pp. ix + 140, 

 with 46 illustrations.] (Chicago : University of Chicago Press ; London : 

 Cambridge University Press ; n.d. Price 4s. net.) 

 In this volume Prof. Coulter has chosen to keep to eminently safe and easy, if 

 already somewhat well-trodden, ground in dealing with the evolution of sex in 

 plants, and for the non-biological reader it forms a sound introduction to the 

 study of a biological problem which has in the past been left too exclusively to 

 writers dealing with animals, in which matters are complicated by secondary and 

 accessory characters of various kinds. He has wisely made no attempt to avoid 



