Fan. 18, 1883] 
NATURE 
263 
direct and plain that it serves the purpose of conveying 
thought without leaving an impression of the manner of 
conveyance. As in the matter, so in the manner, his 
personality is not permitted to intrude. He says one 
thing at a time, and therefore his sentences are short ; 
but he does not exaggerate, and therefore he never 
indulges in epigram. 
A noteworthy feature of the illustrations is the repro- 
duction of a large number of De la Beche’s cuts, which 
are derived directly from the original blocks. All of these 
are good, and so are the majority of the remaining illus- 
trations, but there is also a considerable number, espe- 
cially in the chapters on stratigraphy, which are not so 
distinct as is desirable, and which probably owe their im- 
perfection to the employment of some photo-mechanical 
process. The typography is excellent, and a page of 
errata is not called for. 
The foot-notes contain a very large number of useful 
references. These are not mere citations of authorities 
in support of statements in the text, but are indications 
to the student of treatises in which he may find the fullest 
exposition of subjects to which the text introduces him. 
G. K. GILBERT, 
U.S. Geological Survey 
SACHS’S TEXT-BOOK OF BOTANY 
Text-Book of Botany, Morphological and Physiological. 
By Julius Sachs, Professor of Botany in the University 
of Wiirzburg. Edited, with an Appendix, by Sidney 
H. Vines, M.A., D.Sc., F.L.S., Fellow and Lecturer 
of Christ’s College, Cambridge. Second Edition. 
(Oxford, 1882.) 
HERE are not wanting signs that the study of botany 
is steadily increasing inthis country. An immense 
number of text-books or manuals have been published 
in English during the last thirty years on the subject, 
some of which have been very popular, to judge by the many 
editions they have passed through. Referring to these 
introductions to the study of botany in general terms, it 
was to be noted that they all, in a more or less complete 
manner treated of the vegetable kingdom from a morpholo- 
gical and classificatory point of view; but that the morpho- 
logical portions were deficient in clear descriptions or con- 
ceptions of the origin or development of the members of 
the plant’s body which they described, and the student 
who required instruction as to physiological, anatomical, 
or embryological details, had to look for such in the 
pages of the botanical periodical literature of the day. 
Most modern workers in biology will agree that the 
greater portion of this literature was derived from Ger- 
man sources, and it is scarcely to be denied that the first 
general compendium of note appeared in the German 
text-book of Sachs. This work had reached a fourth 
edition in 1874, but the previous editions had found their 
way into several of the centres of botanical teaching in 
Great Britain and Ireland, and had caused a consider- 
able change in the older methods of teaching botany. 
Still it must have been a matter requiring some courage 
for the delegates of the Clarendon Press to undertake 
the costly work of translating, editing, and printing in 
English this work of Sachs’, forming a large octavo 
volume of nearly 1000 pages, a text-book one would 
think far too large and expensive for most ordinary stu- 
dents. This work was, however, issued from the Claren- 
don Press in the spring of 1875, and it is not without 
interest to note that for the last two or three years it has 
been completely out of print, so that the edition must 
have been exhausted in the course of the first four or five 
years after its issue. It was most unfortunate that this 
edition, so ably translated by Messrs. Bennett and 
Thiselton Dyer, had not been based on the fourth Ger- 
man edition, which had been published nearly a year 
before the English translation made its appearance. The 
success of the translation may, however, be looked on as 
to a certain extent condoning this misfortune, and there 
can be doubt as to the revolution in the study of botany 
in these kingdoms, which has been brought about by its 
appearance. Instead of to an endless catalogue of under- 
and above-ground forms of stems, instead of a list as 
long as that of the ships in Homer of the forms of 
simple and compound leaves, the student has had 
his attention—at least in scme schools—called to the 
important structures to be met with in these varied 
portions of a plant and to their peculiar functions 
and ontogeny. The subject of plant life and development 
seems to have become of more especial interest and to 
have rallen like a new story on many even old ears. It 
was not, under these circumstances, surprising that a new 
edition was called for, but it did excite some surprise 
that, having in a great measure made the demand, the 
Delegates of the Clarendon Press seemed unable for a 
time to supply it, and let several Long Vacations glide by 
without its appearance ; even this new edition comes to 
us late in the autumn season of the year, when the year’s 
fruits have been well garnered in. Still itis welcomeas an 
important contribution to the study of a science that has 
of old and for long been fostered by the University of 
Oxford. 
Welcome as this new edition is, it would, we firmly 
believe have been a much more complete text-book and 
have reflected more of credit on the Clarendon Press 
Series, if the present Editor had been given a fairer field 
to work on. Although the fourth German edition was in 
advance of the previous one, yet the half-dozen years that 
have elapsed since it made its appearance have been 
years during which botany has advanced with no tardy 
footsteps. Even Prof. Sachs himself could not be per- 
suaded to face the torture of a fifth edition of the original, 
for he felt, as he tells us, that the expanded views of the 
present period would not even fit into the framework of 
his text-book, so that a faithful translation of the fourth 
edition is even more out of date in 1882 than the trans- 
lation of the third edition was in 1875. 
Hence it must have been distressing for the Editor of 
the volume before us to find, on entering on his task, that 
nearly the whole of Book I., which treats of the general 
morphology of the cell, the tissues, and the external 
conformation of plants had been for some time in type, 
and that consequently a number of recent discoveries 
had not been noticed in it. No one could have been 
better fitted than Mr. Vines to have brought this most 
important section up to date, and it is a pity that only 32 
out of its 232 pages were reprinted, for there is a decided 
awkwardness in looking in an appendix for supplementary 
