. Boon F^EVIEVS . 



Plant Life Considered with Special Reference to Form and 

 Function. By Charles Reid Barnes, Professor of Plant Physiology 

 in the University of Chicago. Henry Holt & Co., New York City. 



This is a compact digest of the more elementary parts of the 



works of Sachs, Strasburger and other more recent writers on plant 



structure and physiology, very little in the way of new subject matter 



or figures being included. According to the author, " Plant Life " is 



an attempt — 



1. To exhibit the variety and progressive complexity of the 

 vegetative body. 



2. To discuss the more important functions. 



3. To explain the unity of place in both the structure and action 

 of the reproductive organs. 



4. Finally, to give an outline of the more striking ways in which 

 plants adapt themselves to the world about them. 



We are further informed that the boo*k is expected to be of use 

 to pupils thirteen to eighteen years of age enjoying good laboratory 

 and teaching facilities. It will be found, w^e fear, that owing to the 

 arrangement the first of the above tasks has been executed but too 

 well, for the average pupil of the secondary schools will be well nigh 

 certain to gain from the use of this treatise the idea that botany is a 

 subject of endless and inextricable complexity. Why make it worse 

 than it is by discarding a natural and rational for a much more com- 

 plex and entirely artificial arrangement ? Does Professor Barnes 

 really believe that the student will be better able to understand or 

 remember the phenomena connected with the life history of mosses 

 on account of the distribution of facts and diagrams bearing on that 

 subject in nine separate and distinct parts of the text-book ? And is 

 it not plain that the student's knowledge of mosses will be less ? It 

 is the general fault of text-books that they are constructed on the 

 assumption that all students are beginning careers as specialists in 

 the author's field of study, and the tendency to consume time and 

 energy in laying a foundation of facts, definitions and distinctions of 

 use and of interest only to the specialist is evidently as strong with 

 the physiologist as with the systematist. Accordingly it may be sug- 

 gested that the present work will probably find its greatest utility in 

 supplementing rather than as furnishing an elementary course in 

 botany. The large number of figures illustrating the generally con- 

 cise definitions, together with a copious appendix of directions for 



