1904. Vattv^v^soi^.— CIia7iges on the foreshore of Belfast Lo7i^h. 113 



unfavourable weather. The tide not ebbing as far as it did, 

 and some of the grounds that are still available being covered 

 by the incoming tide sooner, and left bare by the ebb later 

 than formerl}^ have further reduced the extent of the birds* 

 feeding grounds and the time within which they can procure 

 their food, so the present diminished numbers of many 

 species seem but a natural consequence of these altered cir- 

 cumstances. Often now one sees the birds flying down over 

 the flood tide earlier than formerly. On returning to their 

 feeding grounds over the falling tide," the birds frequenting 

 both shores seem to come in massed flights to about as far as 

 Cultra Point, when those that intend to remain on the 

 County Down side keep straight on parallel to the shore, 

 while those going to the Whitehouse banks on the north 

 shore of the Bay strike obliquely across it westwards. 



Croft House, Holywood, 



REVIEW. 



FOR EXAMINATION CANDIDATES. 



Second Stage Botany. By J. M. Lowson, M.A., B.Sc, F.L.S. 

 London : University Tutorial Press, Ld., 1904. Price 3^. bd. 



This book, as its sub-title shows, is an adaptation of the same author's 

 ** Text-Book of Botany " to the requirements of the second stage exami- 

 nation of the Board of Education, South Kensington. Part I. deals in 

 two chapters with the general external morphology, physiology^, and 

 histology of the Plant ; the eleven chapters of Part II. are devoted to the 

 Augiosperm ; the remaining eight chapters of the book, comprising 

 Parts III. and IV., treat of the Vascular Cryptogams and their relations 

 to the Flowering Plants, and of the Lower Cryptogams. There are also 

 two appendices, and some sets of examination questions. The 

 unfortunate divorce between morphology and physiology, which usually 

 takes place in books of this kind, occurs as early as the second paragraph 

 of the Introduction ; the former, with its thousand and one technical 

 terms, claiming and obtaining henceforward preferential treatment, to 

 the detriment of the latter, which is practically dismissed in a couple of 

 chapters. The author lays stress on the necessity of practical work it is 

 true, but the few experiments which he suggests in the physiological 

 part of the book are put forward in such a half-hearted fashion, and 

 usually in such meagre outline, that the student would probably never 

 dream that they were meant to be performed. It would be well nigh 

 impossible, for instance, for a student to set up a so-called "water- 

 culture " from the barest hints given on p. 132, and doubtless he would 



