A TEXT BOOK OF BOTANY 131 



The author is heartily to be congratulated on the way in which 

 he has reviewed and summarized the enormous amount of material 

 with which he has had to deal. Little that is really essential has 

 been omitted, and compression has never been carried too far. It 

 is also not a book written to support a theory, though many 

 theories which the author holds are incidentally presented to the 

 reader. -o- tt m 



A Text Book of Botanv. By J. M. Lowson. Seventh Impression. 

 (Fifth Edition.) Pp. viii., 607, 354 figs, in text. London: 

 Clive, University Tutorial Press. 1910. Price 6s. 



This book has been enlarged considerably since its first edition, 

 but the general method and plan remain unchanged. The student 

 is advised in the preface to read Part i. merely " in a general 

 way" — a somewhat uninviting beginning. In Part ii. the 

 Angiosperm is treated in detail, including morphology, physiology, 

 and the characters of a few natural orders. Part iii. deals with 

 Vascular Cryptogams and Gymnosperms in a series of types, 

 together with some account of the homologies and relationships 

 between these and flowering plants. This account is fairly clear, 

 but its brevity, necessitated by the scope of the book, makes 

 it somewhat misleadingly incomplete. This third part concludes 

 with a chapter on Ecology. Part iv. comprises accounts of lower 

 cryptogamous types, and Part v. deals with " Additional Natural 

 Orders," concluding with " Test Questions " and a few practical 

 hints. The type employed in the body of the book is tolerably 

 good, but the small type of the numerous additional paragraphs 

 is somewhat trying. 



The details of elementary morphology are treated throughout 

 in a clear and succinct manner, and the reader is assisted materi- 

 ally by the lucid and boldly-lettered diagrams. An industrious 

 student with a good mechanical memory might readily master 

 these details from this text-book, unaided by a tutor and without 

 previous knowledge of the subject : the author has, without doubt, 

 the knack of presenting facts intelligibly. There is, however, a 

 lack of that organic continuity which we should welcome in a 

 modern text-book ; fact is too seldom, and at best too barely, 

 associated with function ; the subservience of structure and habit 

 of the individual parts to the plant considered as a whole and as 

 a living organism is not emphasized ; the student's mind is centred 

 wholly upon each detail as it is presented in its turn ; he forgets 

 the life to which the detail contributes its quota of service. 



In this connection the isolation of physiology and its relega- 

 tion to a couple of chapters is ominous. Even here the vital 

 principles — notably those of energy and respiration, the keynote 

 of every living organism— take a minor place and are veiled in a 

 tangle of detail and an array of formidable experiments, the 

 expression of the outward and visible signs, merely, of those 

 principles. The examinee who is asked for an account of respira- 

 tion will think more of Sachs' apparatus than of energy and 

 metabolism. The vast importance of the water-current^ — of its 



