&8 LA BIOLOGIE VEGETALE. 



lucidity from a strict avoidance of those bard terms in which 

 physiologists — especially German ones — wallow. It goes farther in 

 making no very exhaustive demands on knowledge of other sciences 

 to enable the reader to keep pace with the author. It shows us, in 

 fact, tbat the life of plants, so far as it is understood, is essentially 

 a simple affair ; that what we know of it may be told, in outline at 

 all events, in plain language, and with no recondite references. One 

 can conceive that this is calculated to bring the study into contempt 

 in some quarters, but no doubt that will be survived. That which 

 is abstruse in the study, and difficult in the extreme, calling for the 

 highest efforts of the human mind, is the prosecution of the inquiry 

 and the winning of accurate results. The two things have been too 

 long confounded. M. Vuillemin has happily recognised this, and 

 he does not forget it. His book is a French one in more than one 

 sense. There is a prominence in it of French methods of treatment, 

 and probably this is as it should be — at the worst it is not so 

 exclusively national in its treatment as many German books of 

 the kind. 



The introductory chapter is perhaps not equal to the remainder 

 of the book in point of simplicity. The first chapter deals with 

 the cell, and the second continues the subject. Chapter III. deals 

 with the bodies of plants, the formation of tissues, and the combi- 

 nations of these as exhibited in cellular and vascular plants. Chapter 

 IV. is devoted to functions, and is introductory to what follows. 

 The fifth chapter treats of fixation, support, and protection. Chapter 

 VI. (misprinted IV.) is a long one, and it deals with absorption in 

 perhaps somewhat too great detail, considering the balance of the 

 book. The subject is tedious, and the author occasionally succumbs 

 to it. Moreover, he takes absorption in a very comprehensive 

 sense, and perhaps it would have been better to break up this 

 chapter, and give its contents under several headings. Strangely 

 enough, some of the most interesting and forcible passages in the 

 book are embedded in this chapter. Excretion is used in a similarly 

 comprehensive sense as the title of the next chapter — the giving off 

 of gases and liquids, &c, being here dealt with alongside of much 

 else. The eighth chapter is devoted to respiration, and the ninth 

 has the inclusive title " transformations internes," and it keeps its 

 promise ! Chapter X. deals with the specially vital functions, 

 while the last two (XI. and XII.) treat of the social life of plants, 

 the former of the relations — social and sexual — between individuals 

 of the same species, and the latter of the relations between different 

 species, finishing with very interesting sections on parasitism and 

 symbiosis. 



There only remains the duty of mentioning that the book is 

 well-printed and of handy form. The woodcuts are bad, so bad that 

 they often fail to illustrate the author's meaning, and there is no 

 index. The table des matieres is a mere list of chapter headings. 

 However, one would not thus ungraciously part with so excellent a 

 book. The author has earned for it a high degree of success by his 

 efforts to write attractively and accurately on a subject which often 

 wears a forbidding aspect. G. M. 



