1896 | CURRENT LITERATURE 17 
text-book is due to the division of labor made possible by having four col- 
laborators, each a specialist in the section he treats. 
Was it pure accident that exactly one-fourth of the pages are by Stras- 
burger, on morphology, one-fourth by Noll, on physiology, while in the 
remaining half, the cryptogams, by Schenck, yield a little to the phanerogams, 
y Schimper? There seems something too much of exactness here for pure 
accident, particularly as one would hardly expect such a division of space from 
the nature of the subjects. 
It is difficult, where all is so good, to point out the best; yet every reader 
will concede the palm to the first half of the book. External morphology 
is cut rather short by Professor Strasburger, and we are so charmed by his 
treatment of the internal morphology that we are less ready to forgive 
him the abbreviation. The presentation of the physiology is particularly 
clear and effective. But the enumeration of the characters of each order, 
and even of each family among the phanerogams, seems to us barren and 
unfruitful. Why can we not have a treatment of special morphology which 
shall be more thoroughly comparative? There is need to organize the facts 
known so that they shall form for the student a body of symmetric truth, 
rather than remain disconnected members, related indeed, but scattered as 
it were ina valley of dry bones. Some attempt at this indeed is made by 
both Schenck and Schimper, and with much greater success by the former. 
Schimper Seems less able to free himself from the overpowering precedents 
mn the treatment of phanerogams, so that one finds less that is fresh or sug- 
Sestive here than in any other part of the book. 
Yet it is all good after its kind ; well put, well printed, excellently illus- 
trated. The colored figures are rather for show than of value, though they 
are quite truthful in color. We hope soon to welcome an English translation 
of this excellent book.—C. R. B. 
MINOR NOTICES. 
fa gest GaLLoway has prepared a brief paper upon “ Frosts and 
of si vf _ cting cultivated plants,” in which he has brought together some 
« more important facts relating to frosts and freezes as affecting the 
the De ener, and fruit grower. The paper appears in the Yearbook of 
of eee of Agriculture for 1895, or may be obtained as a separate. 
Sa8 weeds, introduc. 
customary bare 
with €asy artific 
