280 The Plant World, 



to whom the facts of plant geography are in the nature of raw 

 materials. — F. S. 



NOTES AND COMMENT. 



Prof. Douglas H, Campbell has just contributed to the 

 American Nature Series (Henry Holt & Co.) one of the best of 

 the scientifically popular books on the evolutionary history of 

 the vegetable kingdom that has come to our notice. ' ' Plant 

 lyife and Evolution" is essentially Prof. Campbell's earlier 

 "The Evolution of Plants" brought down to date as respects 

 mophological therories, together with a consideration of the 

 factors in evolution and the origin of species, and some dis- 

 cussion of the bearing of the larger features of plant distribution 

 on phylogenetic history. The most noticeable feature of the 

 book is its catholicity towards all the existing views on the 

 operation of the evolutionary processes, and on the phylogeny 

 of the larger groups of higher plants. This is doing no more 

 than to reflect the current state of biological opinion on these 

 matters, but we may well congratulate ourselves that the gen- 

 eral public is being presented with reading matter of this timely 

 and authoritative caracter. 



The principal features of interest at the annual meeting 

 of the Botanical Society of America in Washington will be the 

 address of the retiring president, Dr. Erwin F. Smith, on the re- 

 lation of the crown gall disease to cancer, and the symposium 

 on "]\Iodern Aspects of Paleobotany," in which the partici- 

 pants will be Dr. F. H. Knowlton, Prof. John M. Coulter, Prof, 

 E. C. Jeffrey and Dr. Arthur Plollick. 



The results of the collective activity of the Central Com- 

 mittee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation have 

 been issued by the Cambridge University Press in a volume 

 entitled "Types of British Vegetation." The contributors are 

 Tansley, Moss, Rankin, Cole and West. 



