
GCURRENT.LEPERATURE. 
BOOK REVIEWS. 
Vegetable physiology. 
THE NEED of a book of moderate compass to present in clear and suc- 
cinct form the principles of plant physiology is well met by Professor Green’s 
recent volume.!. In a handy volume of 450 pages the author has discussed 
the structure and differentiation of the body (35 pp.); the skeleton (17 pp.); 
the absorption, transport and loss of water (50 pp.); aeration and respiration 
(29 pp.); the various processes of nutrition, including absorption and syn- 
thesis of foods, translocation, storage, digestion, secretion and waste products 
(156 pp.); energy relations (17 pp.); growth (15 pp.); temperature and the 
influence of environment on plants (25 pp.); irritability and movement (39 
pp.). These are not the author’s chapter headings but fairly represent the 
various topics. He has “endeavored to present the plant as a living organ- 
ism, endowed with particular properties and powers, realizing certain needs, 
and meeting definite dangers,’ and to keep clearly before the reader the 
fundamental identity of the activities of plants and animals. 
In general the presentation leaves little to be desired. Particularly com- 
mendable is the treatment of nutrition. The author not only lays stress upon 
the true nature of foods, from which category he rightly excludes water and 
carbon dioxid, but discusses clearly photosynthesis, from which he differ- 
entiates, none too strongly, the amylogenic function, and presents, as in his 
earlier work, an excellent chapter on digestion. 
The treatment of respiration and the energy relations of plants, however, 
is not well arranged. To discuss respiration in connection with aeration and 
before nutrition seems to be a reversal of the logical sequence and that to no 
gain. It needs to be brought into intimate relation with nutrition, of which 
it is a phase, and also with the release of energy, of which it is one method. 
Aeration, though incidental to respiration, should be treated in connection 
with gas ae just as root hairs are discussed in connection with water 
absorption. 
The handling of osmosis might be much improved by a broader physical 
treatment, for there is no process whose fundamental principles are so little 
comprehended by most students. The author seems to overestimate the 
meres ‘of root pressure in the transport of water through the stems, for 
N, J. REYNOLDs: An introduction to plant oo 8vo. pp. xx-+ 
459. “rp eel London: J. and A. Churchill. 1900. ros. 
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