
1901] CURRENT LITERATURE 69 
It will be only just, therefore, to express at once our hearty commenda- 
tion of the work which Mr. Jackson has done, and to say that the glossary, as 
he modestly calls it,? is not only by far the largest and most comprehensive 
botanical dictionary in the English language, but by far the best. Concise 
definitions, brief derivations, and the accents are given for almost 15,000 
words, which is about three times the number in Crozier’s hastily compiled 
dictionary, issued a few years ago in this country. The only English botani- 
cal dictionaries are long since out of date and practically useless. 
Mr. Jackson has succeeded remarkably well in traversing the whole 
range of our terminology. Even very new words have not escaped him, for 
he includes such terms as edaphic, tropophyte, geophyte, coenocentrum, com- 
pound oosphere, etc. Most of the definitions are concise an good ; some, how- 
ever, are incomplete, e. g., (ree, xerophyte , some are careless or ambiguous, 
é. £., coenocentrum, mycorhiza (misspelled mycorrhiza), geophyte ; and some 
are antiquated or erroneous, ¢. g., archesforial cells, chlorovaporization, 
oogenesis, fertilization, sperm cell, etc. The accent given does not always 
coincide with lexicons, ¢. g., medillary and eléter. In the former case it 
does not coincide with usage in this country though the author says 
medullary is the usage in England. And if usage even permits eldter, it 
violates all rules of quantity. 
Part, perhaps a large part, of the faults are due to the extreme conden- 
sation of the definitions. This might have been avoided, without making the 
volume of inconvenient size, by dispensing with a number of words derived 
from Crozier’s dictionary, which, as inquiry and search indicate, neither have 
nor have had botanical use in literature, ¢. ia gusset, ensate, hydroid, polydel- 
Phous, secondine, etc. Greater fullness of the definitions might also have 
been compensated for by using thinner paper, instead of the thick and stiff 
Stock, which, together with the stiff binding (entirely unfit for such a refer- 
ence book), prevents the book from opening comfortably or lying open. 
But blemishes suchas these, the more noticeable because so easily avoidable, 
may well be overlooked in view of the good qualities, too many to enumerate, 
which distinguish this book from its predecessors. Every laboratory needs 
a Copy on its shelves.—C. R. B. 
MINOR NOTICES. 
THE FouRTH PART of the “ Catalogue of Welwitsch’s African plants,” 
by W. P. Hiern, and published by the British Museum, has just appeared, 
including Lentibulariacee to Ceratophyllee. The occasion of the publica- 
tion was stated in the review of the first part, published in the GAZETTE (23: 
210. 1897). The present part contains some important families, as Acantha- 
ceae, Verbenaceae, Labiatae, Euphorbiaceae, etc. Approximately ninety 
~ *JACKsoN, BENJAMIN Daypon: A glossary of botanic terms, with their deriva- 
LB. accent. 12mo. pp. xii-+ 327. London: Duckworth & Co. Philadelphia : 
. ippincott Co. 1900. 
