254 EXPERIMENTAL PLANT PHYSIOLOGY. 



owing to the paper being rather thin and not of the best, the 

 pictures occasionally suffer ; this is most noticeable in the first few 

 pages on the cell. 



The chapter on the leaf is especially good, and well illustrated ; 

 the diagrammatic scliemes of phyllotaxy are helpful, and the 

 excellent pictures {not diagrams) of prefoliation are better than 

 pages of description. The anatomy is treated more fully than is 

 generally the case in similar works, and drawings of numerous 

 sections show some of the differences in arrangement of supporting 

 and assimilatory tissue, so that the student is not sent away with 

 the idea that the internal structure of all leaves conforms to a 

 single type. A useful addition to this chapter is a series of tables, 

 by aid of which the names of the most common trees and shrubs of 

 Northern France can be worked out from their leaf-characters. 



The book deals only with morphology and physiology, and is to 

 be followed by a second (now in the press), on classification, and 

 geographical botany and paleontology. Whether the two are to be 

 bound up together, and to have a common index, is not stated in 

 the preface ; at all events, nothing beyond a table of contents is 

 supplied with the present volume, and that, too, is out of place at 

 the end of the matter. 



In the first part, "Morphology," a chapter on the cell is 

 followed by one on the tissues, which are considered in order 

 according to function, whether formative, protective, supporting, 

 nutritive, secretory, or reproductive. Thus the somewhat difficult 

 question of a relation to certain defined layers in the growing 

 point is not discussed. After a short chapter on the distinction 

 of four great groups, the morphology of root, stem, leaf, and 

 flower is successively treated. Then comes a chapter on repro- 

 duction in general, in which we are glad to find a much more 

 explicit account of grafting than is usual in a text-book of botany. 

 The process of development in the four groups is briefly dealt with, 

 and the part ends with a description of the fruit and seed. 



The "Physiology" starts, as it should, with germination of the 

 seed. Then nutrition, respiration, and circulation are discussed in 

 order, followed by "reserve materials," including "secretion" and 

 "excretion." The two chapters on "Fermentations" and "Culture 

 of Micro-organisms," the former a resume of M. Emile Bourquelot's 

 work on the subject, are a useful feature, but would have been more 

 fitly placed at the end of the part, after Chapters IX. and X., on 

 "Irritability" and "Growth," which in the present arrangement 

 come last. A. B. R. 



Experimental Plant Physiolor/ij. By D. T. MacDougall. ■ New 

 York: Henry Holt & Co. 1895. 8vo, pp. vi, 88; figs. 71. 



Prof. MacDougall, of the University of Minnesota, who is one 

 of the most active teachers of botany in the United States, has 

 done well in producing this little book. It is especially welcome at 

 a time when eftbrts are being made to teach plant physiology more 

 widely, not to cram it. It has been the excuse that plant physi- 

 ology could be taught only in laboratories possessing expensive 



