250 BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



Strasburger in Marsilea and Pinus. Cytological evidence shows that 

 it bears a close resemblance in many points to Synchytrium. The 

 question of species on the different hosts and the theoretical aspect of 

 relationship to other thallophytes is treated in a very conservative 

 manner. — Frederick A. Wolf. 



The Life of the Plant. — More interesting to the general reader 

 than to the trained botanist The Life of the Plant, by the eminent Rus- 

 sian plant-physiologist Timiriazeff, is curiously uneven in merit. 1 The 

 lectures, of which this volume is one fruit, were begun in 1870, and the 

 English translation by Miss Cher6meteff is from the seventh Russian 

 edition. As lectures, skillfully illustrated by ingenious experiments 

 they must be fascinating to hear. As a treatise on plant-physiology 

 they are disappointing. Remarkably clear in the description of phe- 

 nomena and in the discussion of the causes and means of some of these, 

 they do not satisfy. For the most part the explanations are correct, 

 but they do not penetrate even that short distance below the surface 

 Which is now attainable. Extolling the work of Darwin but making no 

 mention of DeVries, silent about the studies of others on the problems 

 of breeding and heredity except for petulant allusions to some fellow 

 Russian botanists, we are taken back twenty years or more, when reflec- 

 tion and fancy rather than the results of experiment formed the bulk of 

 evolutionary thought and publication. One would be glad to see the 

 results of the application, during the last two decades, of chemistry, 

 physics, and physical-chemistry to those phenomena of life which we 

 can reach at all, the phenomena of nutrition, respiration, growth, and 

 reproduction, more fully appreciated and acknowledged. On the other 

 hand, it should be axiomatic that a physiologist should know anatomy; 

 but a treatise on The Life of the Plant should be possible without 

 extensive anatomical and morphological descriptions. To be sure, 

 anatomy is regarded in too many American botanical schools as "dry 

 bones" or is omitted altogether. Perhaps, therefore, the descriptions 

 of seed, root, leaf, and wood anatomy are necessary : but they ought not 

 to be. The book is well printed and bound, but unfortunately it is 

 more attractive than satisfying. — G. J. P. 



timiriazeff, K. A., The Life of the Plant. London, Longmans Green & 

 Company, 1912. ($2.50.) 



