70 



NATURE 



\_Nov. 28, 1878 



portion of the brick-earth in which the implements were 

 found at Botany Bay, near Thetford, in Suffolk. The 

 announcement at once provoked strenuous opposition, 

 and therefore, on a tour of inspection of Mr. Skertchly's 

 ■work with Mr. Bristow, we took care to examine into this 

 point. The result was that I satisfied myself of the 

 truth of Mr. Skertchly's observations that the implement 

 bearing brick-earth in places underlies a boulder-clay, 

 which, in his opinion, is not of the earliest date, in which 

 case the men who made these tools must have been of 

 inter- glacial age." 



The " strenuous opposition " to which Prof. Ramsay 

 refers, was directed, it will be remembered, not against 

 the possibility of human remains being found under glacial 

 deposits, but against such a conclusion being accepted 

 without the clearest and most irrefragable evidence being 

 adduced in its support. And it must be borne in mind 

 that a number of most competent observers have exa- 

 mined the sections in question, and have arrived at con- 

 clusions directly opposed to those announced by the 

 officers of the Geological Survey. When, therefore, our 

 author, still speaking of this question of the contempo- 

 raneity of man with the glacial epoch, goes on to exclaim : 

 " Perhaps we cannot prove it, but there is nothing im- 

 probable in the hypothesis, and I am not the only one 

 who believes it," we cannot help entertaining the feeling 

 that this is hardly the spirit in which a scientific question 

 should be treated, and that the method which he adopts 

 is one scarcely calculated to carry conviction to the mind 

 of any competent judge of the matter. 



In laying down this book we cannot refrain from once 

 more expressing our opinion that it is a work of the 

 highest value, and one worthy to take a foremost place 

 among popular manuals of science. The illustrations are 

 excellent ; the woodcuts, by Mr. Sharman — giving a very 

 faithful representation of species which have been selected 

 by Mr. Etheridge as characteristic of the several forma- 

 tions — are quite new, and some views of scenery have 

 also been added to those contained in former editions of 

 the book. The little geological map of Great Britain, 

 which we are glad to see reproduced, is a marvel of clear 

 and accurate printing in colours, and well sustains the 

 reputation of the publishing firm which has produced it. 



FLORAL DIAGRAMS 

 B lathe ndiagravtme. Construirt und erlautert von Dr. A. 

 W. Eichler, Professor der Botanik an der Universitiit 

 Kiel. (Leipzig : W. Engelmann. Theil i., 1876, 

 Theil ii., 1878.) 



THIS book supplies a want that every real student of 

 systematic botany must have felt. The introductory 

 . chapters are devoted to an inquiry into the morphology 

 of the flower and its parts, and the inflorescence ; while 

 the subsequent chapters are a full exposition under the 

 head of each family and order of the floral type and its 

 most important modifications. Preceding each order is a 

 list of the most important works bearing on it, and every 

 quotation is accompanied by a full reference. Hence the 

 book is both a Thesaurus of the literature of its subject, 

 and moreover a Prodromus of phanerogamic morphology. 

 Despite the modest title, the vegetative arrangements are 

 explained wherever they present interest, and the same 



ungrudging pains are often extended to fruit and seed. 

 Unlike too many authors Prof. Eichler is utterly free 

 from provincialism. He cites as freely and constantly 

 foreign botanists as those who have used the German 

 language. Unfortunately we are but poorly represented, 

 for morphological research is all but unknown in Eng- 

 land, and is untaught by both our swarms of botanical 

 lecturers and the great institutions which are the outward 

 and visible sign of what Government recognises as 

 botany. The medical curriculum has overborne original 

 teaching by the former, the herbarium has stunted all 

 else in the latter. Hence few of our botanists are able, 

 like an Eichler or a Baillon, to check observations on the 

 adult flower, with its parts distorted by drying and soak- 

 ing, by their own knowledge of the growth of the living 

 plant. Even the greatest sagacity and experience must 

 be at a loss sometimes from this weakness in the very 

 foundations of their work. For this reason one regrets 

 the more that Eichler makes not a single reference to the 

 works of Griffith, perhaps the greatest botanical genius 

 England ever possessed, who found out for himself the 

 value of developmental research and worked out many a 

 flower by its aid. 



A word on the method of Eichler. The actual editor 

 of the " Flora Braziliensis," he adds to his thorough 

 knowledge of morphology proper a rare acquaintance 

 with systematic botany. Hence he belongs to no 

 school, though awake to the value of workers in more 

 limited fields, in all of which he himself has done good 

 service. A firm evolutionist, he accepts the testimony of 

 systematist, anatomist, teratologist, organogenist, and 

 histogenist, and believes that all of these can in turn 

 shed light on doubtful points. Hence his opinion must 

 be respectfully considered by those who differ from it, and 

 it is worth while to note a few of his conclusions- 

 He regards the nature of the "calyx tube" as vary- 

 ing Avith the order ; truly receptacular in Rosaceae, for 

 instance, it is, partly at least, appendicular in some 

 cases. The petals of Primulacese are regarded as true 

 petals, and not as appendages of the stamens, a view 

 which our descendants will have forgotten or unearth 

 with the lazy amusement with which we look on some of 

 the naif theories of our ancestors. The nature of the 

 placenta and ovule is a more difficult question, and our 

 author, who, in the preliminary chapters of Hart i., pub- 

 lished in 1876, held it essentially variable, has been led 

 chiefly by Celanowsky's arguments to regard it as in all 

 cases an outgrowth from the carpellary leaves. Similarly 

 the ovule, regarded in the First Part as a bud, is now 

 viewed as an emergence. Of course the last word is not 

 yet said on these points, but it is worth noting that 

 Warming also avows his final conversion by Celakowsky, 

 in his brilliant paper on the ovule in the first volume of 

 the Amiales des Sciences Naturelles for 1877 ; and Eichler 

 is at one with Warming in adopting Brown's view of the 

 female flower of Gymnosperms. It is much to be regretted 

 that this point was not really discussed at the late con- 

 gress in Paris, or that its principal advocates do not 

 answer the latest arguments in its favour. But the ques- 

 tion cannot at all be regarded as settled. 



The cup of Euphorbia is regarded as an inflorescence ; 

 but though the pros and cons are fairly stated, no ncT | 

 light is shed on the matter. ( 



