NATURE 
[August 26, 1886 
It is impossible within the limits of a short notice to take 
up more than these two points, but they will be sufficient 
to indicate that the part of the book which treats of meta- 
bolism contains much that is new to English readers 
both in view and in observation. At its close (p. 326) the 
results acquired are summarised in tabular form, con- 
structed so as to appeal to the eye as a balance sheet, 
which takes account of income and expenditure of matter 
and energy, first in green, and then in colourless plants ; 
this brings out clearly the conclusion that there is a nett 
balance in favour of the plant in either case, of both 
matter and energy. 
The next section of the book (Lectures XV.-XXI.) 
opens with a description of the fundamental phenomena 
of growth, which is a clear statement of facts for the most 
part already familiar. This leads to a discussion, extend- 
ing over four lectures, of the accompanying phenomena 
of irritability of growing organs, which result in their 
varied directive curvatures ; two further lectures are de- 
voted to the irritability of mature organs, considered in 
the light of the observations of Gardiner and others on 
the continuity of protoplasm ; and the book closes with 
three lectures on reproduction; these include first an 
account of the chief types of both sexual and vegeta- 
tive reproduction, and conclude with a discussion of 
the theories of sexuality of Strasburger, Naegeli, and 
Weismann. 
With regard to the use of terms, two points demand 
notice: first, as to the words “dorsal” and “ ventral,” 
which have so often been the subject of discussion, espe- 
cially because of the ambiguity arising from their different 
mode of application to leaves,and to dorsiventral shoots. 
But is it necessary to use the terms at all as applied to 
leaves? Will not the terms “anterior” and “ posterior” 
convey the idea just as well, the terms “dorsal” and 
“ventral” being thus left free for application to dorsi- 
ventral shoots? Secondly, Dr. Vines has not accepted 
the term “zygote” proposed by Dr. Strasburger as gene- 
rally applicable to the fertilised ovum: this term is of 
use in avoiding the terms “zygospore” and “ oospore,” 
which, especially the latter, are often understood in an 
ambiguous sense. 
To say that Dr. Vines’s book is a most valuable addi- 
tion to our own botanical literature is but a narrow meed 
of praise: it is a work which will take its place as cosmo- 
politan; no more clear and concise discussion of the 
difficult chemistry of metabolism in the plant has ap- 
peared, wlrile the part which treats of irritability is an able 
digest of the voluminous, one might almost say inflated, 
literature on this branch of the science. In estimating the 
value of the book as a whole, we must bear in mind the 
circumstances in which physiological botany is at pre- 
sent placed. There is no branch of biological science 
upon which it is more difficult to write ; our position with 
regard to the phenomena of vegetable life is throughout 
based rather upon a calculation of probabilities than upon 
clearly established facts ; it is for each individual teacher 
in the exercise of his duty to draw a line between the dis- 
cussion of views, and the acceptance for teaching purposes 
of points still své judice as though they were established 
truths. Dr. Vines has gone rather further in the ac- 
ceptance of probabilities than some will be prepared to 
follow him, and it is perhaps to be regretted that this 
should be the case in a book intended for the advanced 
rather than the elementary student. Placing this on one 
side, the book is one which must command admiration ; 
a glance at the lists of references at the end of each 
lecture will give a clue to the extent of the literature 
which has been searched through ; in erudition it stands 
alone among English books on the subject, and will com- 
| pare favourably with any foreign competitors. 
HOB: 
A PLEA FOR THE RAIN-BAND 
A Plea for the Rain-Band, and the Rain-Band Vindt- 
cated. By J. Rand Capron, F.R.A.S., and F.R.Met.S. 
(London: Edward Stanford, 1886.) 
A NEAT little spectroscopic book, and furnished, as 
f all such books should be, with a nice index, as well 
as not a few plates, which may be considered a second, 
or graphical, index of an instantaneous reference kind. 
But further it is both an honest, and a modest, produc- 
tion ; for while it says nothing more on its title-page than 
what it fulfils, it has not cared to introduce there a com- 
pliment which it might have most legitimately claimed. 
How often in literary history have not two words de- 
cided whether a book shall be bought and read, or not: 
these words being “second edition.” But here they 
might have been exchanged for third, if not even fourth, 
edition, or “issue”;at all events, for the date January 
1886. 
Mr. Rand Capron is evidently of a very practical order, 
and writes for practical men; and as he writes only of 
what he fully understands, and has abundantly worked at 
with his own eyes and hands,—he has the faculty of 
pleasing and satisfying those whom he addresses. This 
is testified to most particularly by the successive reprints 
of his first pamphlet? within the short interval of five 
years ; for though he was not the first and earliest rain- 
band writer, a public had to be created for the subject, 
and is evidently now rapidly increasing. This too not- 
withstanding that the feature wherein Mr. Capron’s book is 
very strong, viz. numerical comparison of rain-band indi- 
cations in the spectroscope, step by step with rain-gauge 
measures, or ozone papers, or hygrometrical readings of 
wet, and dry, bulb thermometers, forms by no means a 
smooth and easy-flowing kind of reading, as mere read- 
ing ; however instructive it may be, and even necessary 
to have at hand to confront unreasoning objectors of an 
older school ; endued often with imperfect senses, but all 
the more positive in their denunciations of a new 
departure in meteorology, on that very account. 
If the poet is born, and is not to be manufactured by 
the tutors known in these days of cram as “coaches,” so is 
it most assuredly with spectroscopic observers, when the 
subject to be observed is not the angular place of a sharp 
line, but the degree of intensity of a nebulous band of 
shade like the rain-band. Such intensity too to be de- 
termined, not by long and repeated observations with 
some grand photometrical apparatus mounted on a firm 
altazimuth stand, with tangent screw motions in every 
direction, but by a moment’s look through a mere waist- 
coat pocket gem of an instrument held lightly between 
thumb and finger, and leading instantly to a judgment on 
the case, like a stroke of nothing less than pure genius. 
