312 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



expetnments. There is an exceedingly copious index (27 pages) 

 which should prove invaluable to students. The book is well 

 illustrated, and all the illustrations are original. The photo- 

 graphs are excellent, but are reproduced on a rather too coarse 

 screen. A few of the figures are a little crude, but the authors 

 deserve thanks for not vainly repeating time-honoured drawings. 

 Many new physiological experiments are described, and some of 

 the older ones have been more or less altered. A chapter on soil 

 is as welcome as it is rare in an elementary book. The account 

 of ecological types — woodlands, heath and moorland, mai'sh- and 

 water-floras, and the seashore — is perhaps a little too condensed to 

 be easy reading. The chapter on classification fails, as in the 

 case of all modern English text-books, to give students any idea 

 of the p-inciples of plant classification. There is too much of the 

 plant dictionary in our books, a kind of glorified floral formula 

 with a list of exceptions generally sufficing for the description of 

 a family. When students are as carefully and intelligently intro- 

 duced to the principles of plant classification as they are to those 

 of other branches of botany, the real importance of systematics 

 will begin to be more clearly understood by professional botanists 

 as a whole. The present book is cheap, well bound and printed, 

 though the paper is very shiny. The authors have produced a 

 work which will be very much used by those w^orking for the 



Matriculation examinations at the different universities. 



J. sx. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, dc. 



Bryologists throughout the world will be grieved to hear of 

 the calamity that has befallen M. Jules Cardot, of Charleville, 

 through the war. Charleville, which is a suburb of Mezieres, was 

 entered by the Germans on the 26th of August. On the previous 

 night every inhabitant received sudden orders to leave at once, a 

 battle being imminent. M. Cardot, his wife and daughter-in- 

 law were thus compelled to leave all they had, taking with them 

 but the clothes they wore and what little money was ready to 

 hand. Everything else was abandoned to the Germans, house- 

 hold goods, family possessions, library, collections, instruments ; 

 and he and his family are now taking refuge in the house of a 

 friend at Dinard in Brittany. To add to the calamity, M. Cardot's 

 income was almost entirely derived from real property in Charle- 

 ville, in all probability by now reduced to ruins. At the outbreak 

 of the war M. Cardot had just completed an important work on 

 the Moss-flora of Madagascar, which had been occupying him for 

 many months past. Among the best known of liis published 

 works are his valuable essay on the Leucobryaceae, his com- 

 prehensive work on Antarctic Bryology, a preliminary Moss-flora 

 of Mexico, a Monograph of the Fontinalacese, a treatise on the 

 Sphagna of Europe, besides innumerable minor publications. 



The Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany), xlii. no. 237 

 (Oct. 8), contains a Flora of the island of Shikotan, by Hisayoshi 

 Takeda, and a long paper on the Evolution of the Inflorescence 

 by Mr. John Parkin. 



