192 BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



study of the geographical distribution of living animals and plants." 

 Geology (not to consider at this point other sciences) thus becomes 

 debtor to the dead work of scores of botanists and zoologists through 

 whose labors for decades past the data in question have been accumu- 

 lated, and much more to this one of their number whose gift of interpre- 

 tation now presents to us a broader and clearer vision of world history. 

 —V. M. S. 



Practical Botany. — The mind trained by years of experience as a 

 teacher and the practiced pen of Mr. J. Y. Bergen have given us, with the 

 assistance of Professor Caldwell of the School of Education in the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago, still another school botany, called Practical Botany. 1 

 The preface states "There are already so many books embodying ele- 

 mentary courses in botany that whoever offers another should give rea- 

 sons for so doing. As here set forth, the study of plants is related to 

 everyday life more closely than is usually done. Those aspects of plant 

 life are presented which have the largest significance to the public in 

 general, and which are of interest and educative value to beginning stu- 

 dents." The attempt is remarkably successful — in the book: but one 

 cannot help wondering how successful the course may be in a city school 

 from which park and country are remote and in which the teachers them- 

 selves are still more removed from nature. The teaching of the natural 

 science by un naturalists is made less injurious by such excellent books 

 as this: but parents will rejoice when their children come into the hands 

 of teachers of such sympathetic knowledge of their subject as the writers 

 of this book.— G. J. P. 



Cereal Rusts. — Two papers by Pritchard 2 are a very material con- 

 tribution to our knowledge of cereal rusts. This work on rust-infected 

 grain seeds is really a step in the right direction toward the solution of 

 the problem which led Eriksson to advance the my ooplasm hypothesis. 

 No matter what may be our personal conviction as to the validity and 

 adequacy of this hypothesis the fact remains that it has been a potent 

 factor in stimulating valuable research on cereal rusts during the fifteen 

 years in which it has been extant. It might be indicated in this connec- 



1 Bergen, J. Y. and Caldwell, O. W., Practical Botany. Pp. 545, illustrated. 

 Boston: (linn and Company, 1911. ($1.30.) 



2 Pritchard, F. J., A preliminary report on the yearly origin and dissemination 

 of Puccinia graminis. Bot. Gaz. 52: 169-192, pi. 1. 1911. The wintering of Puc- 

 cinia graminis tritici E. & H. Phytopathology 1: 150-154, pi. 1, fig. 1. 1911. 



