270 BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



they that will obtain the most favorable illumination." In the very 

 next sentence we read, however: "Hence light intensity is the factor 

 which primarily determines the location of the photosynthetic sys- 

 tem . . . . " a statement which is just as free from objectionable 

 flavor as the previous one is full of it. It is perhaps unreasonable to 

 object to the use of teleological language by a man who holds a teleo- 

 logical philosophy, and it would be still more unreasonable to blame 

 a translator for retaining what he might consider to be an essential fea- 

 ture of the original upon which he was working. It is not a very diffi- 

 cult thing to brush aside the teleology as one reads a book like Haber- 

 landt, but it would be very pleasant not to have to do it. There is 

 scarcely a field of botanical science which lends itself more pliantly 

 to teleological thinking than this very one, in which structures are hav- 

 ing functions cut to fit them. On the other hand there is no lack of much 

 clean, logical deduction in Haberlandt's work, and on the whole it is 

 difficult to overestimate the importance of this botanical field which 

 he has done so much to develop. In it anatomy, physiology, ecology, 

 and the study of evolution unite in a collective consideration of plant 

 tissues and organs, each of these disciplines guarding the others from 

 errors of fact and interpretation. — F. S. 



