104 Bibliographical Notices. 



beaten isles where garefowl probably breed " is delusive, for there 

 is not one authenticated instance of the occurrence of this species 

 within — or even very close to — that line. We think it unnecessary 

 to point out further errors. 



A Handbook of Crypioyamic Botany. By A. W. BENSE-rr, M.A., 

 B.Sc, F.L.S., and G. M. Mtjkrat, F.L.S. With 378 Illustrations. 

 London and New York : Longmans, 1889. 8vo. Pp. 473. 

 Ii is now above thirty years since Berkeley's ' Introduction to 

 Cryptogamic Botany ' was published, and in that time an enormous 

 advance has been made in added genera and species in all the orders 

 and in our knowledge of the complicated life-histories of many of 

 the lower types. It is remarkable that during so long a period of 

 active work, in which the number of teachers and students has been 

 8o greatly multiplied, that no other work of a similar scope has been 

 written in the English language. Partly, no doubt, this has arisen 

 from the circumstance that in the teaching at our universities and 

 medical schools Cryptogamic Botany gets pushed into a small corner, 

 and partly because the field of study is so vast that it has now got 

 specialized into several different departments ; so that our fern-men 

 know very little about fungi and our aigologists about mosses. 



Mr. Bennett has specially worked at Aljjae, and in the present 

 volume he has also undertaken the vascular orders and the Mus- 

 cinese, whilst Mr. Murray has dealt with the fungi, including the 

 Lichens, Mycetozoa, and Bacteria, What they have attempted is 

 not to deal nearly so much as Berkeley did with tribes or even 

 genei'a in detail, but to give a general summary of the life-history 

 of the leading types of form, such as might be suitable for the use 

 of teachers and advanced students. The book is copiously illus- 

 trated by woodcuts interspersed in the text, the figures being to a 

 large extent borrowed from recent German handbooks, such as those 

 of De Ban,-, Sachs, Bcheuck, Luerssen, and Thome, following the 

 example of the last edition of Huxley and Martin's ' Elementary 

 Biology,' they make use of a descending in preference to an ascending 

 order as regards complication of structure. The series of orders is 

 classified out under seven primary subdivisions as follows : — First 

 the Vascular Cryptogamia. Here the orders are grouped under a 

 heterosporous and isosporous series, Ophioglossaceje being treated 

 as a class distinct from Filices. A useful chapter, founded mainly 

 on Solms-Laubach's recent ' Handbook of Vegetable Palaeontology,' 

 is added, upon the fossil types, which, in Equisetacese, Lycopodiaccifi, 

 and Selaginellacese are arborescent and extremely different from 

 anything in existence at present. The second subdivision deals with 

 the Muscineae, separating them into Musoi and Hepaticse. A better 

 subdivision of the Musci would be to keep up Archidivm alone as 

 a distinct order, for the other genera here associated with it, Phas- 

 cum, Ephernervm, and Bruchia, are now by all the best authorities 

 classified with the Bryacese, and Pleuridivm, as the figure given 

 (fig. 122) shows, has the calyplra separated as a distinct cap. The 



