128 NATURAL SCIENCE. August, 



Introduction to real life in the Plant-world, based on lessons originally 

 given to country children. In her preface the author tells us that the 

 study of plant-life has been one of the keenest and most unfailing 

 pleasures of her life ; it was with a view to awakening the same 

 interest in " the dear green world around them " that the notes, from 

 which the book has grown, were made for a course of lessons to village 

 children. Others who have the opportunity for, and are willing to 

 take up, similar work could hardly have a more satisfactory primer 

 than the subject of our review. The child's attention is first secured, 

 and then, in language simple, yet scientifically accurate, the first 

 lessons in plant-life are set before it, its growth and development, its 

 nourishment, and its movements. Then, in the second part, the little 

 students learn something of plant-structure and some details of the 

 work of assimilation. Errors are rare ; we may mention, however, 

 that "perisperm," in Lesson II., should be "endosperm," the term in 

 general use for the stored nourishment of an albuminous seed. 



Crystals in the School-room. 



Crystallography for Beginners ; with an Appendix on the use of the Blowpipe 

 and the Determination of Common Minerals. By C. J. Woodward. Pp. vi., 

 164, with 75 woodcuts and 4 plates. London : Simpkin, Marshall, 1896. Price 

 4s. 6d. 



During recent years a remarkable and significant tendency has been 

 evinced by the more progressive science teachers, to assign a rather 

 subordinate position to the absorption of mere facts, and to make the 

 acquisition of logical habits of thought and of accurate expression the 

 main ends of an elementary education in science. This salutary 

 tendency, which is, perhaps, merely the reaction against classical and 

 traditional methods, is nowhere more apparent than in the teaching 

 of physics and chemistry, and it is at least curious that the great 

 adaptability to modern methods possessed by the related science of 

 crystallography has not been more generally recognised. So much 

 elementary geometry and trigonometry might be taught, and so 

 valuable a faculty for visualising problems in tridimensional space 

 might be acquired Avith ease and pleasure by experimentally illus- 

 trating these subjects with crystallographic examples. 



Mr. Woodward seems to have had some such facts as these in 

 view whilst compiling his little work. He first directs the attention 

 of his students to obvious geometrical relations noticeable on crystals 

 which they have themselves prepared, and catechises them on the 

 immediate consequences of their observations ; the students are then 

 told to measure angles upon their crystals with the aid of a rough 

 contact goniometer of their own construction, and to examine in an 

 elementary sort of way the optical properties of the crystals by means 

 of a home-made polariscope. Although the idea involved in work 

 and thought of this kind is not carried to nearly such an extent as we 

 should think advisable and possible with very young students, yet 

 the combination of actual hand-work with deductive reasoning 

 demanded from the student must go far towards giving him that self- 

 confidence and easy manipulation of facts and things which every 

 science-student must possess, and without which he is a failure. 



The book is clearly written, although in parts a little expansion 

 would have materially conduced to simplicity. A few errors • are 

 noticeable, such, for instance, as the statement, on p. 55, " that the 

 symbols of all planes in a zone have two of their indices always in a 

 constant ratio " ; that this is erroneous is obvious, from the fact that 



