197' 



Reviews of Recent Foreign Literature. 



A Handbook of Cryptogamic Botany, By Alfred VV. Bennett 

 and George Murray. 8vo, pp. 473, i^j'^ illustrations. Lon- 

 don and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889. Price, 

 $5.00. 



Students of botany, of whatever line of research, have long 

 felt the need of a volume wherein could be found accurately and 

 concisely stated the known facts concerning the structure, affini- 

 ities and life history of the lower members of the vegetable 

 kingdom. The need of such a work has, indeed, proved an ob- 

 stacle in the way of their investigation and study, so that the 

 great majority of botanists are almost entirely ignorant of all 

 but the most general and apparent characteristics of this great 

 portion of the world of plants. The literature of the subject is 

 so vast as to be within the reach of but few, and but fewer have 

 the time or the inclination to devote to this branch of knowledge. 

 It has therefore come to be in the possession of a few specialists 

 who write mainly of their specialties for others of their ilk, and 

 but rarely for the world at large. 



The bringing together of this widely scattered and highly 

 specialized information and its correlation into an orderly series 

 has been the work of Messrs. Bennett and Murray, and they 

 nave done it well. The senior author has elaborated the chloro- 



w 



pnyll-bearing groups, and the junior has written of those in which 

 that substance is wanting. The classification adopted is made 

 the subject of a portion of the Introduction. The Pteridophyta 

 and Bryophyta are taken on the generally recognized lines, ex- 

 cepting that the Sphagnaccae are not separated as a class, although 

 the authors are not strenuous in the opinion that they form but 

 an order of Musci. But the treatment of the Thallophyta is very 

 different from what we have recently had, with the exception 

 noted in our last issue. The Charace^ are held to be a distinct 

 class, and are put between the Musci and the higher Algas. The 

 Thallophyta are then treated as (i) Atgae and (2) Fungi. The 

 Algx are grouped according to Professor Bennett's recent paper 



m the Journal of the Linnaean Society, the Fungi follow the 

 arrangement of DeBary, and the Lichens are allowed to come 



