1906] CURRENT LITERATURE 449 
tion, minute, parallel, sex, tall, wound. All of these and many others are now 
include 
Third, more care should be taken to make definitions sufficiently general 
to include the various uses of the word, rather than so special as to refer only 
to particular uses. Thus, conjugate appears as an adjective, but not as a verb; 
conjugating tubes are defined in a special and unusual sense for the Rhodophyceae 
and not at all for the Conjugatae; for pistil is given (after a wholly erroneous 
definition in reference to spermatophytes) an obsolete sense which is restricted 
to the genus Andreaea, when in the same sense it was formerly applied to the 
archegonia of all mosses; retardation is not mentioned as other than the “‘influ- 
ence of light on growth in certain structures;” and a fat enzyme is defined merely 
as an enzyme ‘‘converting olein into oleic acid and glycerin.” 
Fourth, greater aia is sadly ar A few examples will illustrate 
this: Galvanotro pic, A istics, etc.;” geotropism, “‘the force of gravity as 
shown By curvature;” geotaxis, Secveinias in plants caused by gravity;” 
stamen, “‘a male sporophyll;” pistil, “the female organ of the flower;” stamz- 
nate, ‘‘applied to flowers which are wholly male;” oogenesis, “the formation 
of the oosphere, the early stage of the ovule”’ (but oosphere is correctly defined 
later in the same paragraph!); sap-pressure, “the force exerted on passing 
upwards through the tissues;” spermatogenesis, ‘the development of the male 
elements, antherozoids, pollen-grains, and analogous bodies;”’ and so o 
Fifth (a matter for the publisher), the use of a more flexible paper ee looser 
binding would contribute much to the handiness of the volume.—C. R. B. 
MINOR NOTICES. 
The dynamics of living matter.s—In the spring of 1902 Professor JACQUES 
LoEB was invited to deliver a series of lectures at Columbia University. In 
these lectures, eight in number, he presented the gist of his researches upon 
the dynamics of living matter. This book, forming the eighth volume of the 
Columbia University Biological Series, is a somewhat more complete survey 
of the field of experimental biology, says the author, than was possible in the 
lectures. In ten “‘lectures’’ he discusses the general chemistry and physical 
constitution of living matter, certain physical manifestations of life, the réle 
of electrolytes, effects of radiant energy, heliotropism and other tropisms, fer- 
tilization, heredity, and regeneration. 
Through the publication of his collected papers in English in the Decennial 
Publications of the University of Chicago+ Professor Lors’s point of view and 
the general results of his experimentation have become even more generally 
3 Logs, J., The dynamics of living matter. Columbia University Biological 
Serizs VIII. 8vo. pp- xiit+233. figs. 64. New York: The Columbia University 
Press. 1906. $3 
4 Logs, J., Studies in general physiology, 1905. 
