24 The Botanical Gazette. nal 
phological straw-men is a reprehensible practice. It becomes 
doubly so when a writer after knocking down his unrecogniz- 
able dummy tells us that it bore the theory of evolution about 
its garments. 
p. 84. “The nucellus of the ovule arises in many instances (¢. g. i 
orchids) from a mass of tissue produced by the division of a si 
epidermal cell.” This is based on Hofmeister’s statement, but I be 
lieve it is contradicted by later research. 
p- “Pollination is only the prelude to the phenomenon known 
as fertilization. It is important to distinguish clearly between these 
two events 
Comment. Here the proper view of pollination is presented, 
but no withdrawal of the statement that flowering plants are 
‘‘air-fertilized” while flowerless plants are ‘‘water-fertilized.’ 
Indeed (p. 71, bottom and 72, top) it is expressly stated that 
the reason cryptogams lack blossoms is because these are not 
needed for aquatic fertilization, while they are for air-fertiliza- 
tion, hence are developed by flowering plants. 
In general the pages 401-427 in which the true fertiliza- 
tion, or, better, fecundation, of the metaspermic egg is con- 
sidered do not connect with the earlier chapters. This is due 
to the careful rewriting of the latter part, by the editor, I pre 
sume. At any rate it reads differently enough from the 
German original where the same mixture of terms goes Of 
from cover to cover. 
here are many more of these errors and confusions in the 
third half volume of the Natural History of Plants. 1 have 
not time to point them out but may if it seems necessary 
contribute a series of comments like the above upon othef 
points that might prove dangerous if not turned in the right | 
direction. In general I am compelled to say, after a careful 
and complete perusal of the Natural History of Plants, that 
while as a popular store-house of botanical facts it is indeed 
mine of information to the one who knows gold from pyrites 
it is quite unsafe to consider all that glitters, gold. There at 
a large number of facts in it which ‘‘are not so.” And sec 
ond, as an expression of botanical theory I consider it gener 
ally sound but here and there insidiously and insistently m'* 
leading. To the trained student of botanical science thes 
slips will not prove troublesome but to the less widely !™ 
formed reader they will be dangerous. 
To sum it all up: the work is invaluable to the thoroughly 
informed botanical teacher or investigator; he can use the 
