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383 



oral explanation. They are perhaps more interesting as 

 exemplifying what may be not a wholly new departure 

 in university teacliing, in which, with the spread of 

 modern textbooks, mere mechanical note-taking has 

 become an anachronism. In such a subject as Botany, 

 however, in which elementary textbooks covering this 

 class of work are scanty, and the phraseology alone is 

 often a deterrent, such schedules giving a minimum of 

 accurate information form an admirable basis for a 

 lecture which maj- be made interesting to both lecturer 

 and students. The idea is worthy of more extended 

 application. Not only is a considerable amount of 

 information packed away in the two pages of text of 

 some sixty lines each for each schedule, but the collected 

 series affords a good idea of the scope of the subject. 

 The present series contains a fairly detailed account of 

 the organisation of the Scots Pine, in timber, foliage-leaf, 

 and reproductive processes, together with shorter sum- 

 maries for other types of associated Coniferous forest- 

 trees, as spread over a course of fifteen lectures. 



Form-Factors in Conijcrce. By A. H. Chvkch, Oxford 

 Botanical Memoirs, No. 9. (Oxford University 

 Press, 2S. net.) 



No. 9 follows slightly different lines, but is arranged 



as supplementary to the bare lecture-notes. Attention 



is drawn more particularly to the value of features of 



external morphology of the same scries of Coniferous 



trees, from the standpoint of racial organisation and 



, evolutionaiy progression. The more theoretical relations 



, of genera and species are at the present day largely 



j discussed in terms of the more minute microscopic detail 



i of timber-anatomy, and the cytological specialisation of 



I the reproductive processes and se.xual prothallia. It is 



I interesting to find that so much can be made of the more 



readily observed broader features of the organisation of 



these plants, as examined in the open rather than in the 



laboratory, and thus coming within the range of the 



field-botanist. The expression " form-factor " is utilised 



to cover features of construction, as opposed to its more 



technical application in determining the amount of 



available timber, and includes such subjects as the different 



phases of dorsiventral habit in lateral branches, the 



shapes of cones, the mechanism of seed-protection and 



dispersal, as well as throwing new light on the general 



theory of the origin of the curious xeromorphic construc- 



j tion kno^vn as the " Pine-cone." Final sections include 



I suggestions as to the past historj- of the genera in geological 



] time, and a useful summary of the distribution and 



[ significance of " monstrosities." 



I The subject is again largely technical, and is wTitten 

 I out in an aggressively botanical manner ; but to those 

 ' who will take the trouble to master the somewhat abstruse 

 and condensed phraseology, the pages afiord a welcome 

 introduction to some of the more striking problems of the 

 life-history of these few residual survivors of an older 

 epoch of forest-vegetation, and one may begin to take 

 a new and personal interest in such tree-types as living 

 organisms with their own ideals and lihiitations. 



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