JJ5G THE JOURxNAL OF ROTANY 



REVIEWS. 



Strasburger's Text-book of Botany. Rewritten by Dr. Hans Fitting, 

 Dr. Ludwig Jost, Dr. HEINRICH Schenck:, and Dr. George 

 Karsten. Fifth English Edition revised with the fourteenth 

 German Edition by W. H. Lang, D.Sc, F.R.S., Baker Professor 

 of Cryptogamic Botany in the University of Mancbester. 8vo, 

 pp. xi, 799 with 833 illustrations, in part coloured. Macmillans, 

 1921. Price 31s. 6d. 



A feature of the new edition of this well-known text-book is 

 the recognition of the unofficial title under which the book has been 

 known to English students, namely Strasburqer's Text-book of 

 Hot any. Strasburger's position as the original founder of the text- 

 book is thus recorded, and his name among the authors on the title- 

 page is replaced by that of Professor Fitting, who is now responsible 

 for the section on Morphology. Of the four original authors only 

 one remains, Professor Schenck, who is responsible for the special 

 portion dealing with Thallophyta, Bryophyta, and Pteridophyta. 



The book continues to grow in size and seems to have reached the 

 limit convenient for a single volume. Coloured illustrations also 

 continue to form an important feature — not only in the systematic 

 portion where officinal and poisonous species are thus indicated, but 

 for emphasizing contrasts, where this is helpful, as in the illustration 

 of the graft hybrid Cytisas Ailami, or that indicating segregation of 

 characters in the progeny obtained by crossing the red- and white- 

 flowered forms of Mirabilis Jalapa. The general form and plan of 

 the work are similar to those of the original English edition of 1898, 

 but extensive changes have been made in the text-matter, including 

 the substitution of completely new sections on Morphology, Physiology, 

 and Spermitophyta. The greatest alteration is in the first section, 

 that dealing with Morphology. This was in the earlier editions 

 subdivided into two sections dealing respectively with external mor- 

 phology and internal morphology or histology and anatomy. The 

 treatment has been revised and the space devoted to this division 

 much increased, there being now four sections — I. Cytology, on 

 the cell, the protoplast, and their cell-contents ; II. Histology on 

 tissues and tissue-systems ; III. Organography ; and IV. A short 

 section on the theory of descent and the origin of new species, in 

 which evidence is brought forward in support of a theory of evolution, 

 and the two hypotheses — -Lamarckism and Darwinism — are con- 

 trasted. Incidentally this last section illustrates a weakness of the 

 plan of the book ; there is no reference here to more recent views as to 

 the origin of species, but in the division on Physiology, under the section 

 headed Development, a few pages, in which allusion is made to 

 Mendelism, are devoted to it and to heredity and variability. 

 Professor Jost's treatment of Physiology is under three headings — 

 Metabolism, Development, and Movement. 



In Part II, Special Botany, a systematic account of the great groups 

 of plants and their subdivisions, the arrangement is, in the main, on 

 the system developed by Engler from that of Eichler. In the Pterido- 



