3o8 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [October 



can 



which he receives no adequate explanation. Thus, the tonic and stimulating 



action of external factors is discussed in a dozen lines on page 2 and nowhere j 



else referred to. Distinctions the finest 'are drawn bet\\^een normal and abnor- 



I 



mal adjustment, adjustment and adaptation, growth arid modification, that 

 puzzle the re\'iewer; and it is hardly probable they would be more intelligible 

 to the sophomore, for whom the book is intended. 



Logically the arrangement of topics is sometimes peculiar. How is the 

 student to comprehend the treatment of translocation and storage of food as an 

 adjustment to light; and particularly in what sense can digestion, respiration, 

 fermentation, the nutrition of non-green plants, growth, reproduction, pollen and 

 pollination (treated at length), flowering, and fructification be looked upon as 



adjustments to temperature ? 



Dr. Clements is known as the proposer of many. technical terms, of which 

 few, fortunately, reappear in this book. But, what is even more confusing, he 

 makes free to change the meaning of long-used terms. We had a pretty definite 

 idea of what stimulus and response mean, but it does not fit when absorption, 

 diffusion, transport, and transpiration are called responses to water stimuli. 

 Imbibition is defined so as to include the entry of water into porous bodies, 

 Cutinization is said not to coexist with epidermal hairs and is practically limited 

 to xerophytes. The well-known actinometer masquerades as a photometer; 

 heliotropic is distinguished from phototropic; chemosynthesis would never be 

 recognized by the man who introduced the term; rootstalk, a word unknown 

 to dictionaries, replaces the Anglo-Saxon rootstock, Aphototropic must surely 

 be a typographic error, but nyct<9tropic is doubtless an emendation. Reaction 

 time and perception time have new and confusing definitions; but presentation 

 time does not appear at all. 



One serious danger inheres in Dr. Clements' method; there is a tendency 

 to ascribe changes of function and form which have a very complex causation to 

 a particular factor. One has only to examine the table of contents to find illus- 

 trations of this and the pages abound in examples. The offhand way in which 

 some of the most elusive problems are settled by referring them to simple causes 

 is appalling. The cause of cell division, the nature of polarity, the relation of 

 turgor to growth, the mechanics of stomata are a few cases which the judge as 

 it were dismisses with costs I 



Many a pitfall, too, awaits the thoughtless in ''explanations" which are 

 merely a form of words that only cloak our ignorance. Absorption is " an-inherent 

 property of protoplasm;" "the need for the water of absorption increases toward 

 the fibrovascular bundles," and ''in similar fashion the demand for food materials 

 increases toward the outer layers," so that ''the general direction [of movement] 

 is determined by these two facts'' (sic?); the ''stability of a species" prevents 

 its modification in a new habitat — these are a few examples of meaningless phrases. 



For the adopted mode of presentation an acquaintance with recent work is 



