274 



NATURE 



[November 13, 191c; 



and replaced the Turks just named, taking: 

 possession of their settlements and capital, and 

 continuing their culture. They also adopted the 

 new name of Uighurs, which the Chinese, having, 

 as I have said, no letter "r," changed into Hoei 

 Hoei and other distorted forms of the name 

 Uighur. 



These Uighurs became a highly cultivated 

 people, with a considerable literature, which is 

 still extant, and their dialect is known as Eastern 

 Turki. They apparently inherited, from the 

 Western Turks an attachment for the Iranian or 

 Zoroastrian religion, and traces of the Zoroastrian 

 gods and ritual are found among their remains. 

 On other sides their religion was affected by mis- 

 sionaries from other sources. Manicheism found 

 numerous recruits among them, and we are now 

 fast recovering from the buried cities of Eastern 

 Turkestan most interesting remains of the religion 

 of Manes, while the Nestorian clergy founded 

 episcopal sees in their country, and made numer- 

 ous recruits. Presently, and in the seventh cen- 

 tury, Buddhism also made its way among them 

 in the corrupt form, and mixed with the Tantra 

 superstitions, which then prevailed in Tibet, and 

 is known as Red Lamaism in contrast with the 

 reformed Lamaism of the later Yellow Lamas. 



At length, in the ninth century, the religion of 

 Islam found its way into Central Asia, being dis- 

 seminated from the Central Asiatic State governed 

 by the Samanis, and the Western Turks became 

 eager converts to it both in the frontier steppes 

 of the Persian Empire and in Eastern Turkestan. 

 The Eastern Turks or Uighurs continued to be the 

 more cultivated of the race, but the Western were 

 the more powerful warriors, and under the name 

 of Turcomans overran Persia and Asia Minor, 

 founding the famous empire of the Seljuki, which 

 was presently (in the thirteenth century) over- 

 whelmed by the Mongols. 



I am conscious of the extremely meagre and 

 arid nature of this epitome, and how little it does 

 justice to the wide reading and sound judgment 

 of the author. No one knows it better, for I have 

 spent a large part of my life in writing four fat 

 volumes on the Mongols, and two sets of papers 

 on the westerly drifting of Nomads and the 

 northern frontagers of China in the old Ethno- 

 logical Society's Journal and the Asiatic Journal 

 respectively. This may give me at least a claim to 

 speak in terms of high praise of the work before 

 me, in which the author, having the unusual ad- 

 vantage of knowing Russian, has employed it with 

 generous profusion, much to our profit, and in 

 which she describes with clearness the various 

 divisions into which the Turks have been disinte- 

 grated, with their geographical, ethnographical, 

 and religious features, and also tells the story of 

 their doings. It is so well done that I cannot 

 pay the book a greater compliment than to repeat 

 my invitation to the learned lady who has written 

 it to give us a much larger work on the subject. 

 I may add that a most ample bibliography occu- 

 pies 114 of the 242 pages comprised in the work. 



Henry H. Howorth. 

 NO. 261 1, VOL. T04] 



THE LIVING PLANT. 

 Botany of the Living Plant. By Prof. F. O. Bower. 

 Pp. x + s8o. (London: Macmillan and Co., 

 Ltd., 1919.) Price 255. net. 



A GOOD deal of discussion has recently taken 

 ^*- place among botanists on the subject of 

 the reconstruction of elementary botanical 

 teaching, and one of the main contentions of 

 the originators of the discussion was that in 

 order to secure improvement "comparative 

 morphology should be reduced to a subordinate 

 position." It has further been alleged that in 

 modern botanical teaching the teacher has failed 

 to present the plant as a living organism, thereby 

 implying that morphology has been divorced from 

 physiology. Prof. F. O. Bower has already 

 expressed himself forcibly and with sound sense 

 upon the question in the pages of the New 

 Phytologist (vol. xvii., Nos. 5 and 6, p. 105), 

 and has aptly summarised his views with the 

 adage, "Physician, heal thyself." 



In his book now under notice he has given so 

 admirable a presentment of the plant as a living 

 organism that instead of there being any 

 antagonism between physiology and morphology, 

 their fusion and interdependence are so impress<'d 

 on the reader that he can see, not two entities, but 

 "one flesh." 



Prof. Bower concludes the article to which 

 reference has been made with the following : 

 " Finally, each teacher with a due sense of his 

 responsibility, and of his opportunities and 

 requirements, must form his own scheme to meet 

 his own needs. If he cannot do this he is not 

 fit for his position." 



Prof. Bower has followed this very pertinent 

 criticism with his book, "The Botany of the Living 

 Plant," which is framed on the lines of the annual 

 course of elementary lectures on botany given Ijy 

 him at Glasgow for more than thirty years. His 

 main object has been to present the plant as a 

 living, growing, self-nourishing, self-adapting 

 creature, and he has very finely achieved his ideal. 



In his method of treatment of the subject he 

 has allowed the living plant to tell its own story, 

 slowly and naturally unfolding itself stage by 

 stage in such a manner that interest is aroused 

 and observation stimulated. The book may very 

 justly be regarded as an invaluable contribution 

 to sound learning. It does not aim at being an 

 exhaustive treatise, but deals with the funda- 

 mental facts of plant life, and is written in a 

 remarkably clear style, so much so that anyone 

 with only a slight acquaintance with plant life 

 should be able to acquire a real knowledge of the 

 science of botany from a careful study of these 

 essays. 



The opening chapter is occupied by a careful 

 and comprehensive description of the seed and its 

 germination. It is sometimes considered more 

 reasonable to commence the study of botany with 

 the lower forms of plant life, but it is obviously a 

 better plan to set out with a familiar and easily 

 handled object, such as the seed, which marks a 



