﻿CURRENT LITERATURE. 



BOOK reviews! 



Pathological plant anatomy.^ 



Within the past few years several books on plant pathology have 

 appeared, some of them being of great value. They have dealt almost 

 exclusively, however, with but one side of the question, the cause and 

 prevention of plant diseases, rather than with the phenomena shown by 

 diseased plants themselves. The work now under consideration, as its title 

 indicates, takes up an entirely different aspect of pathology, viz., the anatomy 

 of pathological growths. Such conditions as are mere degenerations, like the 

 decay caused by many fungi, are not discussed, but those progressive 

 anatomical developments resulting from pathological conditions or causing 

 them. This book differs from others in which pathological anatomy is 

 discussed in that the pathological structures are classified, not according to 

 the external causes supposed to produce them, nor according to their place 

 of origin on the plant, but according to their actual structure as compared 

 with one another. 



The five descriptive chapters take up the following main subdivisions of 

 the subject : Restihttioii, the process of replacing lost parts, is treated here, 

 since the formation of the reparatory tissue, like the formation of many 

 pathological tissues, is connected with a utilization of energy, which is spared 

 the organism that develops normally. Hypoplasy, the incomplete develop- 

 ment of cells or tissue, may affect only the size or other features of develop- 

 ment, as for example the amount of differentiation. Metaplasy, by which is 

 designated every progressive change of a cell that is not connected with its 

 abnormal enlargement or division. Hypertrophy, used in the sense that 

 Virchow used it, designates the production of abnormally large cells, which 

 may be single or grouped to form an abnormal tissue or organ. It is to 

 be distinguished from the subject of the following chapter, hyperplasy, which, 

 again in Virchow's meaning, is the abnormal increase in size of tissues or 

 organs caused by an abnormal multiplication of cells. The last two sub- 

 jects are extensively discussed, the former having the following subdivisions: 

 hypertrophy as a result of suppression of the division of the growing cell 

 where normally division should occur; as a result of etiolation; hyperhydric 

 growth, including the so-called *' oedemata'*; tyloses; gall hypertrophies, e.^., 

 galls due to Erineum and Synchytrium; and multinucleate giant cells, occur- 



^KiJsTER; Ernst, Pathologische Pflanzenatomie. pp. vii + 312. figs- 121. 

 Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1903. M %. 



218 [march 



