Allgemeines. — Anatomie. 371 



published as it was during the present Century does not really 

 come within the scope oi the authors history; nevertheless he 

 is not unmlndful of the importance of the epoch-making work 

 which was being published, whilst he was engaged on his book 

 and has consequently added a useful summary of de Vries' 

 important modification and extension of Darwin's work. In 

 the chapter on the vitalistic view of nature the author deais 

 with the oscillations which took place during the Century 

 between the vitaüstic views held by such men as Bichat and 

 Liebig on the one band and such purely mechanical views 

 of the nature of organic life as were current at various periods 

 during the Century. This chapter is of particular interest at the 

 present moment when the discussion has been reopened by the 

 publication of Reinke's Neovitalismus. The chapter of the 

 psychophysical view of nature will appeal more particularly to 

 Physiologists and Psychologists, but it cannot fail to be of interest 

 to all who are in any way concerned with the problems of 

 life, whatever province of nature they are studying. 



The Statistical view of nature, historically the last to come 

 into prominence, is perhaps older than we are disposed to con- 

 sider it, having in our mind particularly the labours of Galt on , 

 Pearson, Weldon and others. But its beginnings lay early in 

 the Century when Quetelet made his Statistical investigations into 

 the variability of the human type and the mean man among 

 different peoples and in different centuries, white much of the 

 earlier Statistical work has more or less direct bearing on the 

 more recent inquiries. Sufficient 1 think has been said to show 

 the eminent Service Dr. Merz has rendered to all Biologists 

 by the publication of the second volume of his History. It 

 will be of the utmost use to all who deal with organic life to 

 have this concise and carefully annotated history of those im- 

 portant views of riature, which now at the commencment of 

 the twentieth Century are again brought to the front by the 

 work of Pearson, de Vries, Reinke and others. 



F. E. Weiss. 



Holm, Theo., Croomla pauciflora Torr. An anatomical 

 study. (American journ. of science. XX. p. 50 — 54. f. 1. 

 July 1905.) 



A member of the Roxburghiaceae; besides the North American 

 species there is another one in Japan: C. japonica Mig. The mono- 

 typic Stichoneiiron and the small genus Stemona (Roxbiirghia Banks) 

 are with Croomia the only representatives known of the order. Croomia 

 pauciflora is a low herb with a few green leaves and two — or three — 

 flowered inflorescences near the apex of the Single stem. The rhizome 

 is a sympodium; it is slender, horizontally creeping with stretched inter- 

 nodes and scale-like leaves. The roots are white, somewhat fleshy and 

 sparingly ramified; they develop mostly below the nodes or, sometimes, 

 a little above these. 



The habit of C. japonica is the same, but the flowers are Single 

 and the rhizome has no stretched internodes. 



The anatomy of the vegetative organs is described, and characteristic 

 of Croomia pauciflora is the structure of the mestome Strands in the rhizome 



24* 



