REVIEWS 377 



exist between the several organs of internal secretion. If the function of one 

 ductless gland be exaggerated or suppressed, the abnormal composition of 

 the blood which results may modify the behaviour not alone of the nervous 

 or muscular systems, but also, and sometimes especially, that of other tissues 

 producing hormones. Thus the effects of thyroidectomy are not all due directly to 

 the removal of thyroid secretion from the circulation, but in part to the deranged 

 metabolism of the genital glands which results. It would be easy to multiply 

 instances of such secondary relations between the hormone produced in one 

 tissue and the body generally ; the conception is of the highest importance. 



English readers are under an obligation to Miss Forster for the way in which 

 she has carried out a difficult task. One hopes that she may before long place 

 before them a translation of the second German edition of Dr. Biedl's monograph. 

 Since the publication of the first edition much work of fundamental importance 

 has appeared, in particular the nervous control of the adrenal organs has been 

 exhaustively dealt with by Elliott and by Cannon, with the startling result that 

 a new avenue from physiology to psychology has been opened up. 



G. R. Mines. 



Physiological Plant Anatomy. By Prof. G. Haberlandt. Translated from 

 the fourth German edition by Montagu Drummond, B.A., F.L.S. [Pp. 

 xv + J77. With 291 figures in the text.] (London : Macmillan & Co., 1914. 

 Price 25s. net.) 



When the first (German) edition of Professor Haberlandt's book was published in 

 1884, it came as an exposition of the results obtained during the first decade after 

 the appearance of Schwendener's classical work on the application of mechanical 

 principles to the structure of the higher plants, which represented the first systematic 

 attempt to consider the details of plant structure in the light of adaptation to 

 function. The earliest pioneers of plant anatomy — Malpighi and Grew in parti- 

 cular — fell into the very natural error of speculating on the functions of the 

 structures they unravelled, at a time when physics and chemistry and the knowledge 

 of the general economy of plant life were in a very rudimentary stage, the result 

 being the promulgation of grotesque theories. Some of these persisted among 

 untrained observers and popular writers, and indeed it is no uncommon thing 

 to come across them even now in popular works, while one is continually reminded 

 of them by the retention of terms which had a very different meaning when first 

 applied from that they now bear — as for instance, the term " tracheae " for the water- 

 conducting vessels in the wood, which were supposed by Malpighi and Grew, in 

 applying the term to plant anatomy, to have the same air-conveying function as the 

 similarly named organs in animals. The ground was prepared for the Schwen- 

 denerian school, of which Haberlandt was and remains the most brilliant pupil 

 by the labours of Hugo von Mohl and his successors, von Mohl rigidly confining 

 himself to descriptive work, and, by bringing the subject back to objective reality, 

 well and truly laying the foundation of modern plant anatomy, while Naegeli, 

 Sanio, Hanstein and others took as their guiding principle the idea that the 

 history of development gives the true key to the interpretation of structure. 

 However, even the historical or phylogenetic method tends to become barren and 

 formal without constant reference to function, and it is only in a combination 

 of the two points of view, the historical and the physiological, that we find a 

 logically satisfactory method, which has been so thoroughly applied in detail 

 by Haberlandt. In applying this method it is constantly borne in mind that 



