142 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [June, 



College Botany^ including Organography^ Vegetable Histology^ 

 Vegetable Physiology^ and Vegetable Taxonomy.. By Edson S. 

 Bastin. G. P. Englehard & Co. Chicago, 1889. 8°, pp. 451. 

 (Price $3.00.) 



From the above tide it will be seen that the teaching of botany may 

 now be revolutionized. Just as the first botanists, herpetologists. ich- 

 thyologists, ornithologists, and mammalogists amused themselves with 

 collecting, describing by superficial characters, classifying, and identify- 

 ing specimens, so have we been too much in the habit of rearing students 

 to do the same. Our text-book makers have prepared books with the 

 above object in view and admitted that they had little better to offer. 

 But such will be the case no longer. 



Here is a botanv that actually gives us the science of plant life and 

 how to study it in all its forms and phases. It introduces us to their 

 minute structure, their organs, and the functions of all these organs. 

 One may now study biology, the science of life, while dealing with 

 plants as effectively as if dealing with animals. One need no longer 

 confine his botanical studies to collecting and identifying plants. This 

 book of Prof. Bastin's ought at once to supersede Gray's Botany in all 

 the schools and colleges, and even if Gray's is to be used it should be 

 only in connection with or after Bastin's. This is saying that the student 

 should now devote himself to acquiring a knowledge of vegetable struc- 

 ture as illustrated not only in ffowering plants but in cryptogams, ferns, 

 algiE, fungi, lichens, leaving the identification of genera and species to 

 spare moments. The new method will lay for him the foundations of 

 horticulture, agriculture, etc., as the old method never could do. 



You have already suspected truly that to be a botanist of Bastin's 

 school one must be a microscopist to some extent. To provide for this 

 he has included a chapter on the use of the microscope and its acces- 

 sories. The 18 pages of small type devoted thereto are judiciously 

 used. 



The whole volume is profusely illustrated, there being no less than 

 S79 figures. Let every teacher procure a specimen copy at once and 

 put the new method into immediate use. 



Force and Energy: a Theory of Dynamics. By Grant Allen. 

 Humboldt Publishing Co. New York, 1889. 

 This octavo of 55 pages is the January number of a monthly period- 

 ical which has now reached Number 106. It is offered at 15 cents per 

 copy and should reach the hands of every physicist. Some of the 

 earlier numbers relating to biological topics would prove valuable to 

 our readers. A catalogue will be found in the April number. 



o- 



Essays on God and Man., or a Philosophical Inquiry into the Prin- 

 ciples of Religion. By Rev. Henry Truro Bray. LL. D. St. 

 Louis, 1888. 13°, pp. 270. 

 This book is both radical and conservative in the best sense of these 

 words. It goes to the root of matters, but only to find it, not to pull 

 it up or throw it away. On the themes of which it treats it presents 

 the best that has been thought and written in everv age. The style of 

 the author is clear and strong, his temper judicial, his spirit reverent. 



