2yS NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



lieve the tedium of the mere tenniiiolojjy, niid produce something like 

 a complete and continuous picture of the life-history of the plant. A 

 bolder recasting of the book, such as Dr. Masters could have given us, 

 would certainly not Lave diminished its popularity ; the ready sale of 

 geological books seems to show that there is a taste for a rather specu- 

 lative treatment of a subject. 



The sections devoted to the root and stem, which are written witli 

 great freshness, remain pretty much as in the last edition. Henfrey's 

 account of the branchhig of roots by continued bifurcation is totally 

 opposed to the statements of other writers, and it does not seem easy 

 to verify it by observation, nor to explain on this view the at first sym- 

 metrical disposition of the branches observed by Gaudichaud and Clos. 

 Germination is usually very briefly dismissed, but the division of Pha- 

 nerogams into Exorhizse and Endorhizne is far from absolute, and, as 

 pointed out by Berkeley,* depends upon cereals being usually taken 

 exclusively as the type of monocotyledons, although Richard's view of 

 the scutellum being the radicle, which he is led to adopt, is no doubt 

 untenable. The germination of Palms does not seem to be noticed at 

 all. A few changes might have been made for the sake of uniformity. 

 Batatas edulis is said to have a " large fleshy tuber" (p. 320). Else- 

 where (p. 29), the stem-tubers passing into rhizomes of Convolvulus 

 Batatas are described ; they are usually considered to be enlarged ad- 

 ventitious roots. A student, too, would probably overlook the identity 

 of the stock {caudex) of Tamils eh'pliantipus (p. 37) with the tuber of 

 Testndinaria elephanlipes (p. 373). 



The use of the term rhizome or rootstock (p. 31) for the stem of 

 the Male-fern, though adopted in the Student's Flora, seems incorrect ; 

 there is surely no essential structural difi'erence between it and the stem 

 of a Tree-fern ; indeed, the ingenuity of gardeners has sometimes given 

 our Male-fern an arborescent habit. The description of the internal 

 anatomy, moreover, of the stem of Ferns stands unaltered. Mohl cor- 

 rectly describes it as consisting within the cortex of a fibro-vascular 

 cylinder with perforations, which allow the central parenchyma to be 

 continuous with that of the bases of the leaves, the fibro-vascular bun- 

 dles of which are derived from the margins of the perforations, and 

 not from the surface of the cylinder between them. The statement 



* Journ. L'oj. Agi". Soc. xxiv. p. 422. 



