1900] . CURRENT LITERATURE 211 
Passing next to consider its adaptability to elementary teaching, it becomes 
at once evident that the author’s aim has been not only to meet the best con- 
ditions of the present, but to lead the teaching of the science into a better 
estate. Asa work intended for use either now or in the future, by beginners, 
however, it seems to the present reviewer not free from faults. Some of the 
subjects particularly emphasized, especially the alternation of generations and 
the morphological transitions from group to group, though immensely impor- 
tant and full of meaning to advanced students, are too abstract to be of 
either much interest or profit to beginners, whose basis of fact is extremely 
slender. The treatment of these topics is particularly lucid, but one cannot 
resist the impression at times that Professor Coulter, in writing these parts, 
had his colleagues rather than his students in mind. For this reason the book 
would seem better fitted for the use of students of some maturity, and espe- 
cially for those who already have studied botany to some extent, and who 
wish to go over the subject systematically. 
Again, the treatment of physiology seems not only inadequate in relative 
amount, but also unfortunate in mode. The former point may be met if the 
student uses the companion volume Plant Relations, which contains consider- 
able physiology ; but probably most students, especially most school pupils, 
will use only Plant Structures. Several of the leading physiological topics 
are not only at least as illuminating as some of the morphological ones, which 
the author treats so well, but they are equally capable of laboratory study 
and demonstration. Indeed taking the two volumes Plant Relations and 
Plant Structures together, they appear to the present reviewer weak in their 
physiological parts, notwithstanding the immense importance of physiology 
3 a basis for ecology. Moreover, physiology, taken in one mass by itself, as 
in Plant Structures, is apt to prove rather indigestible, and experience shows 
that its topics may be more profitably considered along with the structures in 
which the work is principally carried on. The morphology of the flower 
appears also to have received hardly adequate treatment, especially in view 
of the fact that it is a subject generally misunderstood by our teachers. 
But these latter criticisms have to do more with matters of opinion than of 
fact, and opinions may well differ. Upon one point however we can all 
agree; that Professor Coulter has given us a most excellent book, and one 
that is sure to prove both stimulating and seryiceable.— W. F. GANONG. 
In Evans’s Botany for beginners’ we have a handy little volume with 
Some good points, but on the whole very crude. The plan of combining 
laboratory directions with reading text is not unwise, but the author has 
attempted to cover too wide a field. He is coerced, perhaps, by the English 
béte noir, the examinations of the Science and Art Department, and although 
* Evans, Ernest: Botany for beginners. 12mo. pp- viii +290. figs. 277. Lon- 
don and New York: The Macmillan Company. 1899. 
