178 ERYTHEA. 



chapters on plant societies and the relation of the plant to its envi- 

 ronment we are given a most clear and successful presentation of 

 the elements of what is comprised under the new term ecology. 



We should expect this First Book to be successful. The theme is 

 not only effectively worked out, but the author begins at tlie right 

 end of the subject — not only considering the plant as an individual, 

 which is important, but beginning with tlie highest plants, where 

 may be found examples of correlated differentiation in structure and 

 function which appeal to the natural history instincts of the school- 

 boy or girl. The compound microscope is in no way essential to 

 good work in botany in the schools. 



The illustrations are numerous, including many good photographs. 

 That the camera may be used to illustrate more successfully than 

 the pencil certain classes of subjects, is beginning to be very clear; 

 and rapid progress along this line is doing much for such books as 

 this one before us. — w. l. j. 



Sketch of the Evolution of Our Native Fruits. By L. H. Bailey. 

 [MacMillan & Co., New York, $2.00.] 

 To a certain type of naturalist there is no more pleasing field for 

 study than a country in its primitive condition, inhabited only by 

 plants, wild animals, or aboriginal man. Of the many inquiries 

 which quicken in the mind of a traveler, few are more engaging 

 than those relating to the food products of the savage and the possi- 

 bilities of the improvement of food plants under the touch of a 

 progressive race. Asa Gray gave expression to a similar line of 

 thought in the following sentence: " It would be curious to speculate 

 as to what our pomology would have been if the civilization 

 from which it, and we ourselves, have sprung, had had its birth- 

 place along the southern shores of our great lakes, the northern of 

 the Gulf of Mexico, and the intervening Mississippi, instead of the 

 Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Nile, and our old world had been 

 open to us as a new world less than four hundred years ago." 

 These suggestive lines appear upon the title-page of Professor 

 Bailey's recent volume, "The Evolution of Our Native Fruits," a 

 volume in which the author has expounded "the progress of evolu- 

 tion in objects which are familiar and which have not been greatly 

 modified by man." The book is given up in great part to accounts 



