BOTANY. 



Bt Prof. William G. Faelow. 



PEOGRESS IN 1879. 



During the year 1879 publications on botany have been numerous in 

 all departments of the science, especially on the subjects of crypto- 

 gamic botany and vegetable physiology, but the number of works of large 

 extent and those which the Germans would describe as ei)och-making 

 is comparatively small. The activity of the botanical world during the 

 year is shown, however, by the large numbers of papers containing either 

 tJie results of observations on detailed subjects in vegetable anatomy 

 and morphology, or in descriptions of new species, both of pha^nogams 

 and cr^'ptogams. The proi)ortion of valuable papers relating to the 

 effects of light on plants, to the physiological relations of the different 

 coloring matters, and to the action of the different forms of ferment is 

 also to be noticed. 



GENERAL. 



The Chronological History of Plants, or man's record of his own ex- 

 istence, illustrated through their names, uses, and companionship, is a 

 quarto of over 1200 pages by the Idte Charles Pickering. It is an 

 immense collection of scattered facts about diflerent common and culti- 

 vated plants, and the press-work is extraordinarilj' well done. Gray's 

 Botanical Text-Boole, Part I, Structural Botany, now appears as one of 

 a series of three volumes, of which the second and third volumes are 

 to be devoted respectively to physiological botany and cryptogamic 

 botany. The part which has already appeared is modeled on the author's 

 well-known Structural and Systematic Botany, but with much additional 

 matter. The first part of Luerssen's Handbuch tier Systematischen Bo- 

 tanik, intended especially for the use of medical students and apothe- 

 caries, is devoted to cryptogams, and both text and plates are excellent. 

 The Handbuch der Botanik, by Schenk, which forms a part of the Ency- 

 clopccdie der Naturwissenschaften ai)peared in part in 1879, and contained 

 articles by Hermann Midler on the lielations between Flowers and their 

 Crossing by means of Insects, and by Drude on Insectivorous Plants. 



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