28$ THE .TOUR^'AL OF BOTANY 



ultimate complete supersession of heterogamy in the fusing units ; 

 though the complexities of somatic di^erentiation may continue 

 eifective. Among animals a very uniform and almost monotonous 

 scheme of heterogamy obtains, from the lowest Metazoa to the 

 higliest, and the subject is hence considered from a broader standpoint 

 in Botany. 



Professor Bower gives a simple account, stripped of all unnecessary 

 technicalities, of the general facts of plant-reproduction, tracing the 

 progress of sexual differentiation through the vegetable kingdom, 

 from the water to the land, including the elaborated mechanism for 

 post-sexual nutrition Avithin the seeds of higher land-plants. It is 

 edifying to note that Professor Bower in this connection (p. 50) tilts 

 against Tennyson for writing " How [sic] careless of the single life," 

 because the poet was not thinking of something entirely different which 

 had appealed to the botanist, in reference to the infinite care taken by 

 the organism (not " Nature ") to protect what he calls the "germ" ; 

 ignoring the fact to which Tenn^^son was alluding — ?'. e. that, notwith- 

 standing every such precaution, the seed is ulthnately exposed to the 

 caprices of " Nature," and it is in the stage of the resting seed, rather 

 than in germination, that the most appalling wastage of the race has 

 to be endured. 



The account of sexual reproduction from the animal side is put so 

 very' briefly and concisely, that one does it the compHment of wanting 

 more. The comparison of the human ovum with the gametes of a 

 seaweed (p. 5) affords an interesting reminder that the highest 

 organisms, having passed through the Reptilian epoch, have come 

 back to a state practically identical with that of an alga ; the com- 

 parison would have been more effective if the oosphereof Himanthalia 

 or Sargassum had been figured instead of Fiicus. Hence zoology 

 passes on to more intimate phenomena of nuclear S3nigamy, and t]ie 

 possible mechanism of heredity. The Weismannic conception of 

 germ-plasm, so foreign to a botanist, is utilized to bar out the 

 inheritance of acquired characters, to the discomfiture of many 

 educationalists and sociologists who hope for immediate results. 

 Mendelism is introduced in the person of the Blue Andalusian fowl, 

 and pleasing facts are recorded as to the inheritance of insanit}^ and 

 brachydactyly. An implied delicate compliment to the presumed 

 intellectuality of the teaching profession is expressed by its position 

 at the head of the table of falling birth-rates ; though it might be 

 argued that a man who expects to make a living by teaching others 

 is ipso facto " unfit." One cannot expect much more in only about 

 a hundred small pages, but a short list of references to the more 

 reliable literature of the subject might have been added. 



A. H. C. 



The Building of an Autotrophic Flagellate. By A. H. C'ui'rch. 

 Botanical Memoirs No. 1. Oxford University Press. 1919. 

 27 pp. Price 2s. 



Ix a score of crisply written chapters, closely packed with facts 

 and deductions, Dr. A. H. Church gives us a reasoned argument 

 descriptive of the origin and development of the simple self-supporting 



