74 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [10:2— Feb., 1914 



Elementary Biology, Plant, Animal, Human, James E. Peabody 

 and Arthur E. Hunt, pp. xxi+ 170+194+228, MacMillan, $1.25. 



High School Agriculture, D. D. Maine and K. L. Hatch, 432 pp., 

 The American Book Co., $1.00. 



Fundamentals of Farming and Farm Life, Edwin J. Kyle and 

 Alexander C. ElHs, pp. xxxii+ 557, Chas Scribner's Sons, $1.10. 



These six books which happen to come to the reviewer's table 

 simultaneously are interesting representatives of various tendencies 

 in the presentation of biological materials to high school students. 

 In the preface of the first named book, the author states his notion 

 that "it is believed that such general study of plants as is presented 

 herewith should precede the study of agriculture, but it is doubted 

 whether such study of plants as is required of all students should 

 be primarily a study of agriculture," and again ** Forestry, Plant 

 Breeding, Weeds, Plant Enemies and Disease, Plant Culture, 

 Decorative Plants, and Economic Bacteria are topics which are 

 discussed where such discussion seems pertinent to the general 

 theme, but special chapters are not devoted to these topics." 



In the Elementary Studies in Botany the first part of the 

 book — 289 pages — is devoted to practically the same subject 

 matter as was found in Coulter's Plant Studies. Part Two — ^the 

 remainder of the book — is on Plants in Cultivation and deals with 

 the economic plants. There are chapters here on Plant Breeding, 

 Forestry, etc. Needless to say the style of the book is exceedingly 

 attractive, the material is wisely selected, and is presented in a 

 simple and lucid way. 



Bigelow's Introduction to Biology is a blend in the same volume 

 of Botany, Zoology, and Human Physiology. It is a fairly suc- 

 cessful blend. The work starts with the plant as a living thing, 

 discusses plant physiology, then takes up a study of insects as the 

 introduction to animal biology; the vertebrates are studied, the 

 frog being the type, and an attempt is made to center the study 

 around the work of the animal's organs. This course leads on to 

 a discussion of himian physiology. The treatment of personal 

 hygiene in the eleventh chapter is concise and of course in only 

 thirty-odd pages cannot be very thorough. Organisms and 

 Health, the Economic Relations of Organisms, both Plant and 

 Animal Reproduction, make up the rest of the work. 



It certainly seems a much more unified text than that of Pea- 

 body and Hunt, in which the division between plant, animal and 



