62 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



"Ancient Plants" is a very clearly written account of what is 

 known about these plants at present beginning with the var- 

 ious kinds of fossil plants known and the species that occur 

 in coal after which the minute structure of both living and 

 fossil plants is taken up and carefully compared. This fills 

 the first half of the book. The following pages contain the 

 past histories of plant families. These comprise not only the 

 histories of families which still inhabit the earth, but of all 

 those that are now found only in the fossil state, such as 

 Bennettitales, Sphenophyllales and the like. The book is well 

 illustrated, the photo-micrographs of fossil parts being es- 

 pecially good. Though the plants may have lived millions of 

 years ago the cells are plainly to be seen. It will be news, 

 to many that these plants of the far distant past were often 

 more complex than living ones, though with flowers and 

 fruits that seem fantastic in comparison with our own. The 

 price of the book is $2.00 net. 



"Domesticated Animals and Plants" by Dr. Eugene 

 Davenport of the University of Illinois, is on the same gen- 

 eral lines as the author's previous volume on "Principles of 

 Breeding" but is more elementary in character and designed 

 for the secondary school instead of the college. Essentially 

 the same ground is traversed but fewer statistics are involved 

 with the resuh that we have a volume suited to the intelli- 

 gence of those beginning the study of plant and animal 

 breeding. The early pages are devoted to a discussion of 

 the origin of domestic races and the need for improvement 

 and these are followed by numerous chapters dealing with 

 natural selection, variability, the transmission of characters, 

 heredity, adaptation, and other subjects with which the plant 

 breeder must be conversant. The closing chapters attempt 

 to trace the origin of our domestic species of animals and 

 plants. At the end of each chapter there are a list of practi- 



