BOOK REVIEWS 245 



to all living things, the beginner in studying plants naturally should 

 first take up a discussion of one-celled organism and of protoplasm. 

 Scientists who have long since passed the time when they began 

 to study plants sometimes overlook the fact that large and rela- 

 tively complex plants seem more simple as beginning topics than do 

 the really simple one celled plants and animals. The one factor 

 of size which makes great magnification necessary for observation, 

 thus involving new and strange apparatus, renders the study of 

 small forms complex and difficult, while the commonplace plants 

 of field, farm, and garden seem easy and logical subjects for be- 

 ginning botanical study. The author's ninth chapter on "The 

 Food of Plants" would have been more purposeful, and would 

 have helped much to give significance to descriptions of plant 

 structures if this chapter had come first or at least early in the 

 book. 



The supposed evolutionary order of development of the plant 

 kingdom is followed, and type plants which illustrate increasing 

 complexity are discussed. Unusually good colored plates are 

 designed to illustrate the natural appearance of many of the type 

 plants. In the text discussion technical names are usually given 

 meaning by reference to the Greek or Latin derivation of the 

 terms used. The amount and quality of botanical information 

 in the book, and the style of presentation is such that a serious- 

 minded general reader will find the book valuable and entertaining. 



Otis W. Caldwell. 



Practical Field Botany. A. R. Horwood. Pp. ix + 193. 



J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 191 5. 



This book was written by an English author primarily for use 

 in his native land. It is an interesting combination of the old 

 and the new in botanical study. It argues for field work, syste- 

 matic botany, and for the ecological point of view. One who 

 reads the book is impressed with the return of old botanical 

 friends, but upon close inspection the reader finds that in this case 

 these old friends usually appear in new relations. For example, 

 when one notes the chapter of forty-two pages on how to collect, 

 recount, label and store herbarium specimens, he fears that he 

 is being urged to return to "dead botany;" but when he reads the 

 chapters which make use of technical herbarium directions and 

 finds therein such topics as "Plant Survey Work," "Flora of a 



