THE AAIERICAN BOTANIST 115 



it rolls up into a dried-up ball and will keep that way for years 

 until it is put into water again. It is called the resurrection 

 plant". Most of our readers do not need to be told that this 

 remarkable plant is one of the fernworts, SclagincUa lepido- 

 pliylla, that it is not a native of the Holy Land, that it never 

 produces flowers, that it does not remain alive for years, that 

 its unfolding is due to the hygroscopic nature of its stem and 

 leaves, and that the heavy oriental odor w-as imparted to it by 

 the fakir who sold it. Otherwise this delectable bit of botany 

 is all right. 



^ ^ ^ 



We are indebted to two departments of the National 

 Government for illustrations in this issue. The frontispiece is 

 from a photograph furnished by the U. S. Geological Survey 

 Department of the Interior. It was taken by H. E. Gregory 

 and appears in his paper on the "Geology of the Navajo 

 Country". The mountain was photographed from a distance 

 of ten miles and shows not only the character of the surround- 

 ing vegetation, but the clearness of the air that permitted a 

 photograph from so great a distance. The illustration of the 

 potato wart disease was kindly supplied by the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry of the Department of Agriculture. 



BOOKS AND WRITERS 



Benjamin Gruenberg has issued a volume entitled " Ele- 

 mentary Biology" in which botany, zoology and human physi- 

 ology are about equally blended. The book is attractively il- 

 lustrated and clearly and forcefully written, but we fail to see 

 how the physiology of man deserves the prominent place given 

 it unless it is to meet some requirements of State law's on the 

 subject. We are inclined to think that the young student 

 could browse around in this book for a year or more and 



