378 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



though a plant, like an animal, is a machine, it is not a brand-new one constructed 

 to fulfil its present functions, but has been built up and modified step by step 

 according to the slowly changing needs of its ancestors. 



Ever since the original publication of Haberlandt's book, to which his own 

 research has in almost every part greatly contributed, it has been the standard 

 account of physiological plant anatomy. It is perhaps, after all, not much to 

 be regretted that English readers have had to wait so long for the present edition, 

 which sets forth the author's matured views, with much additional matter not 

 given in the previous German editions. On some controverted points he is 

 still somewhat inclined to dogmatise, laying too great stress upon his own 

 explanations and either barely mentioning or altogether ignoring results which 

 lead to quite different views or which show that the question dealt with is still 

 a very open one. The principle of adaptation is apt to be badly overworked in a 

 book of this kind, with the result that ingenious explanations are given currency 

 without the hall-mark of absolutely rigid experimental test. Indeed, it is hardly 

 unfair to say that the book is marked by a pronounced and all-pervading teleology 

 which is somewhat at variance with the general trend of botanical philosophy. 

 However, the logical division of the subject, the lucid style, and the tolerably 

 successful attempt on the author's part to distinguish clearly between well- 

 ascertained facts and speculative suggestions, combine to render it a model text- 

 book ; while even if this attempt is not always carried out as completely as might 

 be desired, the book does for the study of plant histology what Goebel's well-known 

 " Organography of Plants " does for that of general plant morphology — that is to 

 say, the author has brought together a vast amount of scattered information and 

 presented it in a most attractive style, so that whether or not one agrees with 

 all the explanations and suggestions presented, one has nothing but praise for the 

 brilliant manner in which the familiar facts of plant structure are correlated with 

 function and with the history of the various organs and tissues. On the whole, 

 Haberlandt's book, which occupies a unique position in botanical literature, 

 represents the most successful attempt that has been made to correlate the two 

 distinct aspects of plant life which are comprehended in its title, and our admiration 

 for his work is not seriously lessened by the reflection that there is need for the 

 development of much sounder and more cautious methods than have hitherto been 

 available, before physiological plant anatomy can be regarded as fulfilling adequately 

 its important function in assisting the advance of morphological plant anatomy on 

 one hand and that of physiology and ecology on the other. 



After an introduction setting forth the objects and principles of the work, 

 the author discusses the general character of cells and tissues and gives his 

 well-known anatomico-physiological classification of the latter, dealing with 

 the various tissue systems (dermal, mechanical, absorbing, photosynthetic, 

 vascular, storage, aerating, secretory, motor, sensory, and stimulus transmitting) 

 in the succeeding chapters. The last three of these made their first appearance in 

 the third German edition (1904) and it is in connection with them that Haberlandt's 

 original work is best known. His brilliant discoveries in connection with sense 

 organs for gravitational and light stimuli — the " statoliths " or falling starch- 

 grains for the former and the " epidermis lenses " in leaves for the latter — have 

 found their way into most recent botanical text-books and even into the news- 

 paper press. 



English readers, perhaps in particular teachers of botany, to whom this book 

 will afford a well-nigh inexhaustible mine of facts as well as of attractive and stimulat- 

 ing points of view, owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Montagu Drummond for present- 



