192 Recent Literature . [zoe 



universities and colleges, we feel the more at liberty to discuss 

 in how far it is to be recommended as a suitable dictionary for the 

 study of botany. 



It appears, only too clearly upon careful examination, that 

 the author of the present work has not possessed full knowledge 

 of any of the many botanical lines which were supposed to be 

 represented by modern or old terms in this book. 



The literary part of the work has not been done carefully, 

 and the definitions of the various terms are very poor, and 

 absolutely incorrect in many cases. What we hoped to find was 

 not only an explanation of the words themselves, when taken 

 from foreign languages, their derivation for instance, but also 

 their true signification in botany, as they have been or are still 

 applied by different authors. But in this respect the book does 

 not give much information, indeed it seems as if the whole 

 svibject has been treated more like a mere compilation without 

 criticism rather than representing the result of literary research 

 and original investigation. 



It is very unsafe to quote terms from a single article without 

 trying to find out by original and confirmatory investigations 

 what it really means. Instead of finding a uniformity in terms, 

 as applied for instance to a series of homologous organs, we find 

 often great confusion. In many cases the terms themselves are 

 not correctly defined, besides a number of quite common ones 

 are entirely overlooked. 



By considering the morphological terms it is striking to see, 

 that the most essential points are often not given, and it seems 

 necessary to give a few citations: 



"Cotyledon" is said to be "the first leaf or leaves of a 

 plant; " we wonder if this also applies to Cryptogames ? 



' ' Nut " is defined as being ' ' the fruit of certain trees and 

 shrubs, consisting of a hard shell enclosing the seed." The 

 principal characteristic, that a nut is indehiscent, is omitted. 



"Nutlet" is " a small nut, or nutlike seed or fruit as many 

 achenia." We doubt whether it has ever been applied to seeds. 



" Paraphyses " are defined as "sterile filaments," while a 

 filament is defined as " the stalk of an anther." 



" Utriculus " is referred to " utricle " as being "a fruit with 



