358 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MAY 
We regret that the author did not use the metric system ; his objection that 
itis not familiar outside of chemical and physical laboratories is really an 
indictment of botanical laboratories. 
But the book still lacks the treatment of cryptogams which alone can 
those of seed plants, and the unfortunate name “spore plants”’ 
the two sharply apart. The chapters on thallophytes, bryophytes, and 
pteridophytes contain directions for enough laboratory work for a year, but 
they are not well organized pedagogically, nor in such fashion as to indicate 
the more important parts. A single chapter on the evolutionary history of 
plants attempts to furnish a thread of philosophy which has been wanting 
earlier, but the student is left almost unaided to string his pearls of fact, great 
and small, into a shapely whole. The great pregnant ideas of alternation of 
generations, heterospory, and the seed habit lose all their significance unless 
they are presented in connection with the facts they coordinate. 
One naturally expects the Foundations of Botany to exemplify, as most 
books do, the subjects and mode of presentation which the author thinks best 
for the schools. But we find it difficult to interpret Mr. Bergen. One looks 
for the present book tu show advance along the lines which characterized the 
Elements. On the contrary it seems to encourage the teacher of ‘“ analysis” 
by bringing to his hand a better flora; it meets the demand for ecology by 
organizing a section on this subject; it gives the histological teacher ample 
scope for the use of microscope and reagents; it does not develop further the 
physiological features, What is the teacher todo? Is the book a guide to 
wise botanical instruction or simply a book catering to all tastes? This 
uncertain pedagogical sound seems to us to make it doubtful whether /owzt- 
dations will prove as satisfactory as Elements, which had in its time a mission 
that it excellently fulfilled C. R. B. 
Two books on mushrooms. 
PoPpuLAR books on mushrooms multiply. The latest two issue from New 
York. There are many good things to be said for Miss Marshall’s account? 
of the more conspicuous Ascomycetes and Basidiomycetes. In the first place, 
the figures and diagrams are excellent and so numerous that eighty-three of the 
hundred and more species described are well illustrated. A number of the 
half-tone plates are printed in colors and the remainder in black and white. 
The descriptions are simple and clear, and there is also much interesting infor- 
mation appended concerning habits and the edible and poisonous properties 
3 MARSHALL, NINA L.: The*mushroom book. A popular guide to the identifica- 
a8 and study of our commoner fungi, with special emphasis on the edible varieties. 
mp. 8vo. pp. xxvi+167. With many illustrations in color and black and white. 
eatin: Page & Co. New York, 1901. $3.00 

