1891.] Current Literature. 55 



EDITORIAL. 



Most college teachers of botany who are fit for their places would, 

 we doubt not, greatly prefer to have pupils come to them without 

 previous instruction (?) in botany than with the usual sort, which 

 needs first of all eradication. For many of these false ideas the text 

 books are responsible; for many the teachers. Misleading analogies 

 are often suggested in text books, in books for popular reading, in 

 lectures, and now they are appearing in alarming numbers in the bul- 

 letins of the agricultural experiment stations. The laudable object 

 is always to make the statements more intelligible; in which object 

 they often fail, and succeed only in implanting faulty conceptions. 

 Two of these misleading analogies will serve as illustrations. No 

 phrase is more common than " stomata, or breathing-\>ores" and it 

 inevitably connects these apertures with respiration, with which they 

 have almost, or quite, nothing to do. As well call the perspiratory 

 ducts of the human skin " breathing-tubes "! The former analogy is 

 as thoroughly false as the latter. Why not say air-pores if we must 

 have an English form? Respiration is already weighted to the last 

 limit with misunderstandings; this millstone ought to be removed from 

 its neck. "Spores 1. a, bodies that are like seeds in use " — does that 

 analogy illuminate or obscure? The writer from whom this is taken 

 was speaking of conidia, which are much more " like " cuttings or slips 

 in use than like seeds. But why compare at all seeds and spores, 

 mycelium and roots, conidiophores and peduncles? Why not let it 

 be understood from the outset that the fungi are not comparable with 

 the phanerogams? Their structure is simple enough to be understood 

 if described without comparison. When analogy in function is pre- 

 dicated, inferences of similarity in structure, wrong as they may be, 

 are made unconsciously when one object is well known and the other 

 wholly unknown. Examples might be multiplied. Let the teacher in 

 the class-room, before an audience, and in popular bulletins scrupu- 

 lously avoid misleading analogies. 



CURRENT LITERATURE. 



Adaptations to Pollination. 1 



This is a continuation of a work published in 1888 as Heft No. 10 of 

 the Bibliotheca Botanica, and noticed in the Gazette, xiii, 134. The 



1 August Schulz. — Beitrsege zur Kenntnissder Bestseubungseinrichtungen und 

 Geschlechtsvertheilung bei den Pflanzen, Vol. II. Bibliotheca Botanica, Heft 

 no. 17, I & II. Cassel: theodor Fischer, 1800. 



