CURRENT LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
The Bonn Textbook 
A new English edition of this well-known textbook may be made the occa- 
sion to refer to the contrast between German and American instruction in botany. 
It is perhaps safe to say that the Bonn textbook is the most extensively used 
text in Germany, and that in its English translation it dominates in American 
colleges. And yet, from the American standpoint it is more a book of reference 
than a textbook in the usual sense. Its organization and its demands are pecu- 
liar to the German mind and the German system of education. To divide a 
book into “general botany” and “special botany,” and especially to discover 
that these titles are arbitrary rather than significant, suggest some rigid, old- 
fashioned curriculum rather than a logical presentation. ‘General botany” that 
Includes no contact with the great groups, no basis for the evolution of the 
Plant kingdom, no large conception of any kind, is surely a misnomer. It is 
made to include “morphology,” a morphology that does not consider the develop- 
ment of groups, which means a long-abandoned morphology. Then this 
morphology (170 pp.) is divided into “external morphology” and “‘internal mor- 
P hology” (subtitle ‘histology and morphology”). The ‘external morphology” 
'S teally the old type, when ‘flowering plants” furnished almost the only material 
of botany. It is not a question as to the accuracy of the facts, or to their impor- 
lance, but simply a question of organization. Such an organization does not 
oo the development of botanical science today, and it does harm if it 
fads the student to a misconception of the content of the great divisions of 
nag Nor is the organization and presentation of this so-called “morphology” 
* only antique flavor; for when one finds in the textbook sections on the “meta- 
Morphosis”” of shoots, of leaves, of roots, he wonders why this point of view has 
never been changed. 
cxecnt® Section on physiology (153 pp.) by the late Dr. Nout is in the main an 
cellent and well-ordered presentation of the facts, though here and there it 
aes been revised to date. Thus, the fable of the ant plants still appears 
all its frills (p. 235), and the physics of absorption is decidedly antique. 
7 eat of this section most open to criticism is the remarkably vitalistic 
solely : ch author. To say that “any attempt to explain vital ape 
"the Sei tae and physical laws could only be induced by a false conceptio 
Thing oe SEURCER, E., Nott, F., ScHENCK, H., KARSTEN, G., A text-book of botany. - 
— English edition, revised with the eighth German edition, by W. H. Lane. 
+746. figs. 779. London: Macmillan & Co. 1908. 
395 
