NEW PUBLICATIONS. 43 



The Gnetaceai possess an ovary, but it is open and without style or 

 stigma. They form a link, uniting the Coniferce, and through them 

 the Cycadets, to Angiosperras. 



S^lxi ^wblicalmns. 



IIow Crops Grow : a Treatise on the Chemical Composition, Structure, 

 and Life of the Plant, for Agricultural Students. By Samuel W. 

 Johnson, M.A., Professor of Analytical and Agricultural Chemistry 

 in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College. Revised, with 

 numerous additions, and adapted for English use, by A. H. Church, 

 M.A., Professor of Chemistry, and W. T. Thiselton Dyer, B.A., 

 Professor of Natural History at the Royal Agricultural College, 

 Cirencester. Loudon : Macmillan and Co. (Pp. 892.) 



No botanical work is more required in this country than a trust- 

 worthy text-book of vegetable physiology ; it is not too much to say 

 that a good proportion of our systematic botanists are almost entirely 

 ignorant of the facts of plant-life, which have been made out with so 

 much patient investigation by French aud Cxerman observers, whilst 

 one is compelled to confess that origiual researches of the kind are of 

 excessive scarcity in England. It is true that Mr. Darwin's experi- 

 ments are second to none in value, but among the host of his followers 

 in Great Britain, we look in vain for any who will be at the pains of 

 endeavouring to accurately observe the phenomena of vegetable life with 

 an unbiassed mind ; all seem bent on trying to pick out some isolated 

 facts which appear to favour the hypothesis of their lender. 



Tiiough the book before us does not altogether fill this gap in Bri- 

 tish literature, it supplies a good deal of material for doing so. It is 

 not very often that an American book is reproduced in this country, 

 but we certainly think that Professor Johnson's treatise was worth im- 

 portation, and adaptation for English use. 



The plan of the book is very good, the life of the plant being treated 

 of under the three heads of chemical composition, structure and func- 

 tion. Under the first we find th(! volatile elements of the |)l;uit [)assc(l 

 in review, their j)r()i)cflies descriljed aud illustrated, and these are fol- 



