92 THE JOURNAL OF DOTANY 



features as Evolution and Epigenesis, Spiral Theory and Metamor- 

 phosis, or effete systems of classification, have no meaning in view of 

 the wider outlook available since the time of Darwin, with a more 

 correct appreciation of what evolutionary morphology really consists 

 in, as a further introduction to the general principles of systematy, 



The new volume is concise, invigorating, and not too long. It 

 is arranged in twelve chapters, each covering special ground ; the 

 last three being devoted to the more striking developments since 

 1900. Earlier chapters show a marked divergence from the stand- 

 points familiar in Sachs's History, which after all w^as devoted more 

 particularly to German literature since 1530, and showed a natural 

 bias for the German School. Thus Theophrastus, as surammg up the 

 botanic ideas of the Greeks and older civilizations, all largely based on 

 the isolation and cultivation of plant-types still of primary economic 

 importance, is given much greater significance ; though this may be 

 partly due to the accessibility of the admirable translation of the 

 Greek text by Hort (1916). A similar criticism — that Saclis had 

 probably not taken the trouble to read the book — applies with equal 

 force to the dawn of ])lant-anatomy, as represented by the remark- 

 able volume by Nehemiah Grew (1682) emphasized in Chap. II. No 

 special interest attaches to the evolution of systems of classification, 

 when all were about equally wrong; and theoretical s^'stematy could 

 have little importance so long as the number and variety of forms 

 described was insufficient to make any generalizations possible. Of 

 the earlier English systematists Ray is 25i'eferred to Morison ; the 

 latter is even alluded to as a cantankerous person, though a glance 

 at the volumes of his Ilistoria, with their numerous copper- 

 plates and coats of arms of the nobility who paid for them, is very 

 illuminative of the indomitable perseverance of Morison and of his 

 worries in publication ; an encumbrance from which Ray was wholly 

 free. The writings of the great Linnajus are also fitted into their 

 ■just position as finishing off the book-work of his predecessors, and 

 consolidating the foundations of the science without necessarily adding 

 anything ne%v ; and similarly the "Natural System" of Jussieu 

 (1789) is balanced by the even more significant observations of 

 Sprengel (1795) on the relation between flowers and insects, as open- 

 ing up one clue to what flowers really mean ; as in other branches of 

 the science Hales, Priestley, and Ingen-Housz were laying the foun- 

 dation of the physiology of nutrition. 



About one-third of the volume brings the subject up to the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century, and now several great names 

 in English Botany receive special attention, as Knight and Robert 

 Brown ; while it is interesting to get new and breezy estimates of the 

 work of Schleiden, Von Mohl. and Hofmeister, who lead on to the epoch 

 culminating in Darwin (1859), for whom the panegyric by Huxley 

 (p. 135) is appropriately transcribed. Beyond the 'Origin of Species' 

 we come to times within living memory, hence doubtfully of historical 

 value; and the rapid extension of the science in every direction cannot 

 be so readily placed in proper perspective. Such si)eeial departures as 

 cytology and the study of nuclei, the problems of photosynthesis 

 and metabohsm of nitrogen, ascent of sap and even stelar theory. 



