SCIENCE AND FRUIT GROWING 29 



A detailed discussion of various fungicides aud insecticides leads 

 to a serious arraignment of the Food Production Department for their 

 wholesale advocacy of a single spraying solution and that a faultily- 

 composed one ; hut the investigations of greatest scientific interest 

 are, perha])s, those discussed in chapters xxv-xxix, as to the sterilizing 

 effects of heat and of anaisthetics on soils, the production of chemical 

 changes independent of their bacterial contents, the difference in the 

 soil conditions desirable for germination and for subsequent growth, 

 and the demonstration (by a process of exhaustion in which aeration, 

 bacteria, alkalinity, water-supply, and general impoverishment are in 

 turn dismissed as insufficient explanations) that plants produce toxic 

 substances in the soil which are for a short time detrimental to the 

 growth of others. 



The book contains excellent portraits of its authors and well- 

 chosen photographic plates and illustrations in the text. 



Gr. S. BOULGER. 



Botany for Agricultural Students. By John N. Martin, Professor 

 of Botany at the Iowa State College of Agriculture. New York : 

 John Wiley & Sons. London : Chapman & Hall, 1919, pp x, 

 585. Price 12s. U. net. 



We are told in the Preface that "this book is intended for 

 elementary courses in Botany in colleges and universities," that its 

 " aim has been to present the fundamental principles," and that it is 

 intended for one year's work, accompanied by laboratory work. The 

 first half of the work is devoted to the anatomy and physiology of 

 Spermatophytes, in which, to suif the time of year at which the 

 loAva com*se begins, flowers, seeds, and fruits are dealt wifh before 

 histology and the vegetative organs. Special sections are devoted to 

 seed-analysis, the testing of germinative capacity, the soil as the home 

 of roots, pruning, grafting, etc. The second half deals with " Plants 

 as to kinds, relationships, evolution and heredity," which means a 

 tolerably full account of algte, myxomycetes, bacteria, funo-i, bryo- 

 phytes, pteridophytes, and gymnosperms, and a very brief description 

 of twenty-seven families of angiosperms, followed by a chapter on 

 ecology and three others giving an excellent if not very critical 

 -sketch, in some fifty pages, of the conclusions of Lamarck, Darwin, 

 De Yries, Weismann, and Mendel as to evolution, mutations, heredity, 

 and plant-breeding. 



Students intending to devote themselves to agriculture are hardly 

 likely to be interested in so detailed an account of alga?, or biyophytes, 

 horsetails or club-mosses ; and, except under a sj^stem savouring over- 

 much of "cram," Ave should have thought the book sufficient as a 

 manual for three years rather than one-year's study. Certainh^ until 

 students have acquired considerable first-hand knowledge of plants 

 they cannot well be in a position to appreciate at their true value the 

 wide-reaching conclusions dealt with in the last three chapters. 



If American text-book writers wish their books to be adopted for 

 English use, they must add the scientific names to such popular ones 

 as "Wandering Jew," "Beggar Tick," or "Horse Nettle." The 

 second of these names belongs to Bidens, the third to Solanum 

 caroliiiense : " Jimson weed " may be well known to be Datura 



