SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 



131 



how to meet Hard Times, Plants that 

 do not make their own Living, Plants 

 with Mechanical Genius. Although spe- 

 cially designed for the study of the flora 

 of southern California, embodying the 

 results of ten years' observation by the 

 author, it may be recommended to sci- 

 ence teachers in any locality as an ex- 

 cellent guide. The pupil in this vicinity 

 will have to forego personal inspection 

 of the shooting-star and mariposa lily, 

 while he finds the century plant, yuccas, 

 and cacti domiciled in the greenhouse. 

 In addition to these, however, attention 

 is directed to a sufficient number of 

 familiar flowers, trees, ferns, and fungi 

 for profitable study, and the young nov- 

 ice in botany can scarcely make a bet- 

 ter beginning than in company with this 

 skillful instructor. 



Prof. John M. Coulter's Plant Rela- 

 tions * is one of two parts of a system 

 of teaching botany proposed by the au- 

 thor. Each of the two books is to rep- 

 resent the work of half a year, but each 

 is to be independent of the other, and 

 they may be used in either order. The 

 two books relate respectively, as a 

 whole, to ecology, or the life relations 

 of surroundings of plants, and to their 

 morphology. The present volume con- 

 cerns the ecology. While it may be to 

 the disadvantage of presenting ecology 

 first, that it conveys no knowledge of 

 plant structures and plant groups, this 

 disadvantage is compensated for, in the 

 author's view, by the facts that the 

 study of the most evident life relations 

 gives a proper conception of the place 

 of plants in Nature; that it offers a 

 view of the plant kingdom of the most 

 permanent value to those who can give 

 but a half year to botany ; and that it de- 

 mands little or no use of the compound 

 microscope, an instrument ill adapted to 

 first contacts with Nature. The book 

 is intended to present a connected, read- 

 able account of some of the fundamental 

 facts of botany, and also to serve as 

 a supplement to the three far more im- 

 portant factors of the teacher, who must 

 amplify and suggest at every point; the 

 laboratory, which must bring the pupil 

 face to face with plants and their struc- 



* Plant Relations. A First Book of Botany. 

 By John M. Coulter. New York: D. Appleton and 

 Company. (Twentieth Century Text Books.) Pp. 

 2&4. Price, gl.lO. 



ture; and field work, which must relate 

 the facts observed in the laboratory to 

 their actual place in Nature, and must 

 bring new facts to notice which can 

 be ob.served nowhere else. Taking the 

 results obtained from these three fac- 

 tors, the book seeks to organize them, 

 and to suggest explanations, through a 

 clear, untechnical, compact text and ap- 

 propriate and excellent illustrations. 



The title of The Wilderness of 

 Worlds * was suggested to the author 

 by the contemplation of a wilderness of 

 trees, in which those near him are very 

 large, while in the distance they seem 

 successively smaller, and gradually fade 

 away till the limit of vision is reached. 

 So of the wilderness of worlds in space, 

 with its innumerable stars of gradu- 

 ally diminishing degrees of visibility — 

 worlds " of all ages like the trees, and 

 the great deep of space is covered with 

 their dust, and pulsating with the po- 

 tency of new births." The body of the 

 book is a review of the history of the uni- 

 verse and all that is of it, in the light of 

 the theory of evolution, beginning with 

 the entities of space, time, matter, force, 

 and motion, and the processes of develop- 

 ment from the nebulae as they are indi- 

 cated by the most recent and best veri- 

 fied researches, and terminating with the 

 ultimate extinction of life and the end 

 of the planet. In the chapter entitled A 

 Vision of Peace the author confronts re- 

 ligion and science. He regards the whole 

 subject from tlie freethinker's point of 

 view, with a denial of all agency of the 

 supernatural. 



In a volume entitled The Living Or- 

 ganisni'^ 'Mr. Alfred Earl has endeavored 

 to make a philosophical introduction to 

 the study of biology. The closing para- 

 graph of his preface is of interest as 

 showing his views regarding vitalism: 

 " The object of the book will be attained 

 if it succeeds, although it may be chiefly 

 by negative criticism, in directing atten- 

 tion to the important truth that, though 

 chemical and physical changes enter 



* The Wilderness of Worlds. A Popular 

 Sketch of the Evolution of Matter from Nebula to 

 Man and Return. The Life-Orbit of a Star. By 

 George W. Morehouse. New York : Peter Eck- 

 ler. Pp. 346. Price, gl. 



't The Living Organism. By Alfred Earl, M. A. 

 New York : The Macmillan Company. Pp. 271. 

 Pi ice, $1.75. 



