FOUR NEW TEXT-BOOKS 115 



. The authors of the first of the four hooks which are the subject 

 of this notice, remark in their preface that a good excuse would be 

 required for adding yet another to the number of excellent general 

 text-books on botany already on the market. An excuse might be 

 found in some special method of treatment of the subject, or its 

 presentation from a point of view more or less new. The new text- 

 book not infrequently comes as a result of examination experiences, 

 which have shown that many of the candidates have been inade- 

 quately prepared for the test. But the fault often lies with the 

 teacher (or even the examiner) and not always with the text-book ; 

 as Dr. Cook implies in the preface to his College Botany, botany is 

 the study of plants not of books. Prof. Neilson Jones and Dr. Ray- 

 ner have aimed at designing an elementary course which will serve as 

 an introduction to the scientific method ; and also to enable the 

 student or intelligent layman to acquire an understanding of the 

 relation of plant-life to general biological knowledge. They have 

 achieved a readable, well arranged and eminently useful introduction 

 to the study of plants as living organisms. 



The text falls into three parts : I. The plant as a machine, 

 II. Reproduction, and III. The plant in relation to the outside 

 world. The authors begin with the study of the properties of proto- 

 plasm and the cell-unit, and following chapters are devoted to 

 respiration, water-relations, absorption of mineral salts, carbon- 

 assimilation, assimilation of nitrogen, nutrition of heterotrophic 

 plants and enzymes. A number of experiments are suggested and 

 explained by text and simple line-illustrations. Part II. Reproduc- 

 tion includes two short chapters on methods of vegetative and sexual 

 reproduction, a brief sketch of the outlines of classification, and a 

 chapter on evolution, variation and heredit} r . Part III. contains 

 three chapters: — Plant Response, dealing with "irritability" and the 

 various kinds of plant-movements; Ecology and plant geography; 

 and the Soil — a description of the various chemical, physical and 

 biological soil factors. 



The book is not profusely illustrated ; the plates are reproduced from 

 photographs ; the text-figures are mainly simple diagrammatic line- 

 drawings explanatory of the text ; the aim has been to produce the 

 book at as low a cost as possible, which, at any rate from the 

 student's point of view, is to be commended. 



In matter of form Dr. Cook's College Botany is in marked 

 contrast to the Text-book of Plant Biology. It is well bound in 

 stout boards, clearly printed with widely-spaced lines on faced paper, 

 and profusely illustrated. Though half as large again as regards 

 number of pages, it contains less matter than the more modest appear- 

 ing English work. The American firm is to be congratulated on 

 being able to produce an elementary text-book in so attractive 

 a stvle. The volume is the outgrowth of the author's class-work, 

 " an effort to present as many different phases of the subject as 

 possible and to give the student a very general and very broad view," 

 " and to meet the demand for applied botany by making a combina- 

 tion of the elementary principles of pure and applied science." The 

 book is on familiar lines — Part I. on morphology, Part II. on phy- 



