114 THE JOUR^'AL OF BOTANY 



EEVIEWS. 



A Manual of Elementary Botany for India. By Rai Bahadur K. 

 Ranga Achari, M.A., Government Lecturing Botanist, Agri- 

 cultural College, Coimbatore, fonuerly Lecturer in Botany, 

 Presidency College, Madras. Madras Government Press, pp. xv, 

 3G9. Price 2 rupees (3 shillings). 1916. 

 This seems to us a thoroughly good piece of work. It is now 

 forty-eight years since the late Professor Daniel Oliver's First Book 

 of Indian Botany appeared — a remarkable performance for one who 

 had never been in India — intended mainly for English residents in 

 that empire. Our methods of teaching have been revolutionized since 

 1869 : English has become the teaching language for natives of India, 

 and it is for them for the most part that the })resent book seems to be 

 intended. It is restricted to Howering plants, and this has led the 

 author into some of his too wide generalizations, such as the statement 

 (p. 11) that "All plants begin their life as seedlings, which arise from 

 seeds." Starting w^th Tribulus terrestris and Gynandropsis penta- 

 fhijlla — types of Orders so unfamiliar to British botanists as the 

 ZygophyUacece and Capparidaceoe, but admirably adapted for his pur- 

 pose — the author, as might be expected, deals much more in detail 

 with matters of histology and physiology than did his predecessor half 

 a century ago. His work " is intended to meet the requirements of 

 students of Secondary and Tmining schools. Technical and Professional 

 Colleges" ; so that the necessity of insisting on the "use of a micro- 

 scope for pui'poses of demonstration " does not speak well for the 

 educational methods in vogue in India. So, too, what little reference 

 there is to experimental work in physiology reads all too much like 

 mere demonstration b}^ the teacher, as if the heuristic method wei-e 

 neglected. 



The author — wisely, as Ave think, in an elementary work — inter- 

 calates his chapters on such physiological matters as germination, 

 respiration, nutrition, growth, movement, fertilization and seed-dispersil 

 between those dealing with anatomy of the seed, root, shoot, leaf, 

 flower, and seed ; and it is refreshing to find these subjects illusti*ated 

 by unhackneyed Indian examples. In spite of the sentence we have 

 quoted, there is an excellent chapter on vegetative multiplication, 

 followed by one on the principles of classification in which we have 

 noted a few examples of slightly defective English and logic. It 

 begins by the statement that the group of the spermatophyta 

 "includes a very large number of individuals (about 120,000 now)," 

 where obviously " species " is meant ; and goes on to say that, " it is 

 obvious that plants which are alike in several characters should have 

 had a common origin." This might mislead the student into mis- 

 understanding the facts of adaptive convergence. Judging from the 

 works of our caricaturists, the late Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Henry 

 Cha})lin were "alike in several characters"; but we imagine that their 

 common origin was somewhat remote. 



The concluding third of the book is devoted to a description of 

 forty principal Indian natural orders, as against a hundred and sixteen 



