NATURE 



523 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1910. 



ANCIENT PLANTS. 

 Ancient Plants: being a Simple Account of the Past 

 Vegetation of the Eartli and of the Recent Important 

 Discoveries made in this Realm of Nature Study. 

 By Dr. Marie C. Slopes. Pp. viii + igS, with 122 

 figures and frontispiece. (London : Blacliie and 

 Son, Ltd., 1910.) Price j\s. 6d. net. 



FOSSIL botany, once tlie very type of a dry-as- 

 dust subject, lias attracted a good deal of atten- 

 tion of late years, and its more important discoveries 

 and conclusions have become the common property 

 of students of botany, at least in this country. Miss 

 Slopes aims at interesting a wider class. "There 

 is no book," she says, "in the English language 

 which places this attractive subject before the non- 

 specialist, and to do so is the aim of the present 

 volume " ; further on she adds that her book is 

 dedicated "especially to all those who take an interest 

 in plant evolution, because it forms a thread in the 

 web of life whose design they wish to trace." 



The author is well qualified for her work, and has 

 attained a considerable measure of success. Her 

 style is interesting, and if sometimes a little careless, 

 that is, after all, a minor point. Miss Slopes is some- 

 what severe on her predecessors, of whose work she 

 speaks thus : " But, like the records left by the plants 

 themselves, most of this literature is unreadable bv 

 any but specialists, and its really vital interest is en- 

 closed in a petrifying medium of technicalities " (p. 2). 

 Her object is to make these dry bones live, but it has 

 been tried before. 



The chapters on the various kinds of fossil plants 

 and on coal are very well done, especially the account 

 of coal-balls, those calcareous nodules which contain 

 the wonderful structural specimens on which our 

 knowledge of coal-plants so much depends. On this 

 subject the author is a leading authority. 



The " Seven .Ages of Plant Life " (chap, iv.) range 

 from the archasan to the present day; the sacred 

 number seven may have a charm for some ; otherwise 

 we should have thought a shorter list would have 

 been more useful ; there are only four really im- 

 portant periods to be distinguished in the history of 

 plants as known at present. The chapter on stages 

 in plant evolution is wisely kept quite elementary, 

 any general discussion of the evolution of the various 

 groups being necessarily postponed until all have 

 been studied. The assumption that life is "endowed 

 with a continuous impulse to advance " (p. 43) will 

 strike the Darwinian reader as unduly mystical. 



The diagrams and curt descriptions of cells and 

 tissues of recent plants given in chap. vi. will scarcely 

 help the general reader very much ; unless he has 

 had more training in botany than this, he had better 

 leave the anatomy of fossil plants alone. The truth 

 is that fossil botany, if it is to include structure, 

 is not a subject for a beginner. Those, however, who 

 have done some laboratory work before may find 

 this outline of anatomy of some service by way of 

 recapitulation. 



NO. 2139, VOL. 84] 



Ten chapters are devoted to the past histories of 

 plant families, and form the main division of the 

 book. It is impossible to follow these chapters in 

 detail ; on the whole, they give a very good sketch 

 of some of the chief results of modern research, but 

 their merits will be best appreciated by those who 

 have some previous knowledge. The author has some 

 incisive remarks on the modern theory of the origin 

 of Angiosperms from Cycadophyta, allied to the Ben- 

 nettitales ; she says: "We must not forget that the 

 Bennettitales have only recently been realised fully 

 by botanists, and that a new toy is ever particularly 

 charming, a new cure particularly efficacious, and a 

 new theory all-persuasive " (p. 103). This is quite 

 a fair hit, but the next paragraph is less happy. In 

 criticising the supposed primitive position of the 

 Ranales among Angiosperms, the author states that 

 they are most frequently delicate herbs, and that they 

 are peculiarly remote from the group of Bennettitales 

 in their vegetative structure. Really it is the shrubby 

 Magnoliaceee which chiefly come into the question ; 

 in the structure of the wood some of these plants are 

 more like Gvmnosperms than any other of the 

 Dicotyledons. 



The concluding chapter, which includes an ingeni- 

 ous attempt to forecast the future course of plant- 

 evolution, is very interesting. It is perhaps a pity 

 that in the space of about one page the author tries 

 to give an idea of the mutation theory as opposed 

 to pure Darwinism. An altogether misleading idea 

 of Darwin's position is given, and the whole question 

 would have been better omitted in a book for 

 beginners. 



In the appendices some hints on the collection of 

 fossil plants are given, followed by a short biblio- 

 graphy. It is rather hard on Mr. Kidston that he 

 is only represented by his British Museum catalogue 

 of 1886, a list which he would certainly regard as 

 now out of date. The book concludes with a glossary 

 of some botanical and geological terms. 



Most of the illustrations are good and useful ; a 

 few, especially some of those from photographs, are 

 less clear than is desirable in an elementary book. 



Although, as we have seen, there are some points 

 open to criticism. Miss Stopes's book is an enterpris- 

 ing and able attempt to popularise a difficult subject. 

 The really keen student will undoubtedly be stimu- 

 lated to pursue the study of fossil plants further, and 

 even those who are not students will get some new 

 ideas and derive a certain amount of interest from 

 a book which is sometimes brilliant and never dull. 



D. H. S. 



BRITISH RAINFALL. 

 British Rainfall, igoq. By Dr. Hugh Robert Mill. 

 Pp. 120 + 308. With maps and illustrations. 

 (London : Edward Stanford, 1910.) Price 10s. 



THIS volume is the forty-ninth of the series, and 

 the largest hitherto issued, but the price remains 

 the same as when it was a quarter of the size. The 

 value of the work of the British Rainfall Organisa- 

 tion in all questions in which an accurate knowledge 

 of the rainfall is essential has been acknowledged on 



