210 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [ MARCH 
due to Unger than the Genera Plantarum would lead us to believe. Unger 
was anxious to furnish floral diagrams for the entire work, and offered four 
drawings to Endlicher as models. Although they were mutually agreed on 
the plan, it was for some unknown reason abandoned, and this phase of sys+ 
tematic botany was thereby retarded a score of years; for it was not until the 
days of Eichler that floral diagrams of comparable excellence with those 
originals of Unger first made their appearance. ; 
We are reminded, too, in these days of ecological enthusiasm that there 
is nothing new under the sun; for even as early as 1836 Unger was actively 
engaged in the study of the influence of soil and climate on the distribution 
of plants, regarding a floral region as “ein meteorologisches und geog- 
nostisches Gemalde.” To use his words: “A floral picture should be drawn, 
which must not only show its individual parts in the relations of space and 
time, but also the causal relations between external factors and inner life 
Should be studied.” nger is therefore to be regarded as one of the 
founders of the biological or ecological method in systematic botany.— 
EpwIn B. ULINE, Mankato, Minn. 
New elementary text-books. 
THE past few years have witnessed many notable advances in education, 
but none more remarkable than the wonderful improvement in the teaching of 
elementary botany, at least in its theory. From its prevailing state of well- 
nigh barren formalism of less than ten years ago, it has leaped forward until 
it has become a vigorous and sympathetic representation of the science. This 
progress has been both marked and stimulated by a series of noteworthy 
works, the latest and most advanced of which is Professor Coulter's Plant 
Structures.4 Not only does this work mark the highest degree. yet reached in 
books devoted to the newer mode of teaching the science, but it probably 
marks the highest point it will reach, for it represents very nearly or quite the 
logical extreme of the tendencies of recent years. 
Any consideration of such a work as Plant Structures must take account 
of it from two points of view : first, its botanical merit, and second, its adap- 
tability to the purposes for which it was prepared. As to the former, the 
present reviewer has little but praise. That the work would be quite in touch 
with the present state of knowledge, both in fact and in spirit, was of course 
to be expected of its author, and this expectation is fully justified by the book. 
It is not entirely free from errors, but these are so slight as to be inappreci- 
able in the general excellence of the work. It is written with great clearness, 
illustrated fully and beautifully, and as a whole proportioned judicially. 
hether viewed from a botanical, a literary, or an artistic standpoint the 
book is admirable. 
‘COULTER, JOHN M.: Plant structures, a second book of botany. -Pp. x+348, 
figs. 289. New York: D, Appleton & Co. 1899. $1.20 
