NOTICES OF BOOKS. 251 



the question was really one for morphologists to settle, and they 

 settled it. To treat the controversy, with Mr. Cooke, as still active 

 would be absurd. One might as well describe the battle of 

 Balaclava as still in progress because survivors happily remain 

 with us. The question was settled, and it was not decided in 

 favour of the systematists, headed by Nylander. Mr. Cooke, how- 

 ever, digs up the hatchet, and goes for de Bary, Schwendener, and 

 the rest, just as if there were some novelty left in his proceedings. 

 He fortifies himself with the following inspiring sentence written 

 by " Dr. Nylander, the prince of lichenologists" : — " I have adduced 

 that the gonidia and gonimia of lichens constitute a normal organic 

 system necessary, and of the greatest physiological importance, so 

 that around them we behold the growing (or vegetative) life chiefly 

 promoted and active." Mr. Cooke quotes this sentence with 

 special approval, and if he can understand it, no doubt he is 

 entitled to use it. For our own part it appears to us that the man 

 who could write a sentence like that is very unlikely to take a lucid 

 view of anything. 



It is difficult to take seriously the work of any man on Fresh- 

 water Algre who describes, in this year of grace 1890, the symbiosis 

 of lichens as a "hallucination" (p. 183). It may be well enough 

 — it is intelligible at any rate — that men like Nylander, Krempel- 

 huber, and others, cited by Mr. Cooke, who have more or less con- 

 fined their studies to systematic lichenology (a branch of study 

 differing remotely from systematic botany in its extraordinary and 

 absurd methods), — it is well enough that these men should cling to 

 their ancient faith ; but when an author presents to the public a 

 book which professes to teach the form and structure of Fresh-water 

 Alga?, it might surely be expected that he should leave this matter 

 alone or take a reasonable view of it. Let him point to distinguished 

 authorities on Fresh-water Alga? who fail to recognise these among 

 the "gonidia" of lichens! If Mr. Cooke expects an attentive 

 hearing on this matter let him not proclaim his own ignorance. 



The first 190 pages of this book are of an introductory character. 

 The chapters are on such subjects as collection and preservation, celt- 

 increase, polymorphism, asexual and sexual reproduction, conjuga- 

 tion, pairing of zoospores, alternation of generations, spore ger- 

 mination, spontaneous movements, notable phenomena (such as 

 the " breaking of the meres," Bed Snow, Gory Dew, Blood Bain), 

 the dual hypothesis and classification. Over the ground covered by 

 this list of subjects, there is, indeed, wanted a good trustworthy 

 popular guide, though the literature is easily enough got at by 

 students. Mr. Cooke would have been the better for such a guide. 

 His knowledge of the literature as displayed here is certainly scanty 

 and by no means recent. To point out tins inadequacy of treat- 

 ment ra anything like detail would be labour spent in vain. 



After this introductory portion we have the systematic portion, 

 consisting of short descriptions of the British Fresh-water Algse, 

 and at the end the figures of the genera. This is better. It might 

 be objected to the descriptions that they arc short — so they are, but 

 on the whole they are judiciously shortened ; and considering the 



