BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



Plant Genetics. — A recent addition 1 to the series of texts from the 

 Botanical Department of the University of Chicago indicates by its 

 appearance the increasing demand from students in biology for instruc- 

 tion in genetics. The purpose of the book can be judged by quotations 

 from the preface. "The group that the present book is intended to 

 serve primarily comprises those who intend to make botany their 

 profession and who, although not as yet specialists, have had general 

 training in the fundamentals of botany. Such students, for example, 

 are commonly found in the last undergraduate year or the first grad- 

 uate year of their work with no distinct purpose to become geneticists, 

 but wishing to be able to appreciate the important current work in 

 plant genetics." .... "The purpose of the lectures was not to 

 develop professional geneticists, but merely to initiate students of 

 botany into the point of view of working geneticists, so that they could 



appreciate an important phase of botanical literature 



There was no attempt to give a complete presentation of modern 

 genetics, but rather to introduce the student to genetics in the simplest 

 way. As a consequence, for pedagogical reasons, certain perplexing 

 facts were omitted, while others were slightly adjusted so as to convey 

 the fundamental ideas without confusion." . . . . "As a text- 

 book .... it has two disadvantages: (1) it is avowedly not 

 exact in some of the details; (2) it is adapted definitely to young bot- 

 anists with fairly thorough elementary training. The excuse for the 

 inexactness of certain details is the pedagogical necessity. The prep- 

 aration of a text for the students referred to is explained by the fact 

 that it represents a very important group which has not been provided 

 for. In brief, the book is neither a technical presentation of genetics 

 nor a general text, but a course of general lectures adapted to a special 

 purpose." 



The series of lectures embodied in the text were obviously written 

 from the standpoint of a botanist. In the first part of the book the 

 well-known facts and theories of genetics are briefly sketched and their 



1 Coulter, John M. and Merle C. Plant Genetics. Pp. 214, figs. 40. Univer- 

 ity of Chicago Press, 1918. 



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