1397] CURRENT LITERATURE 213 
of Mexico, and includes also the Pringle and Palmer Mexican collections. 
To those of us who know of the professional duties of Professor Beal, this 
large volume comes with a measure of surprise. That he could find time to 
undertake, and had the persistence to continue the use of his fragments of 
time long enough to reach this result, speaks well for his devotion to the sub- 
ject. The author has fully described in these pages g12 species, 809 of which 
are natives. About 160 new names occur, arising from various causes, forty 
of them being those of unpublished species, chiefly Mexic 
Analytical keys are quite a feature of this volume, the ae doing all in 
his power to facilitate the work of identification. The usefulness of keys 
must be tested by a somewhat wide range of use, so that no statement of Pro- 
fessor Beal's success in this regard can be made in advance. 
Taking into consideration the shifting of opinions certain to occur during 
an active period of ten years, the author must have found it very laborious to 
adapt his work to every new statement of v that inv tion proved 
worthy. It is to be expected that agrostologists will discover numerous things 
to which exception may be taken, but the writer has discovered, t n- 
ful experience, that the making of a manual covering a large area, or a large 
number of groups, calls for such an immense amount of detail that many things 
are sure to escape notice until too late to remedy. essor F. Lamson- 
Scribner has called attention to some of these with such detail as to make his 
notice useful as a permanent appendix to the volume. 
The book is a great boon to agrostologists, and “il vie the study 
of a group neglected out of all proportion to its importance.— J. M. C. 
A new text-book and dictionary. 
It seems evident that the elementary text-book of botany still remains to 
be written. e great development of ogy has tended towards 
presented i is of the sterile, pigeon hole kind, singularly free from evolution, 
morphology, ecology, geographical distribution, or anything else that gives 
taxonomy significance. Any indication that an elementary presentation of 
botany should include a consideration of plants as holding a definite place in 
_ Nature, as occurring in societies that are determined by many external factors, 
as bound together by various genetic relationships, as consisting of organs 
which have an evolutionary history, should be bancoscel as the promise of better 
things. 
Mr. Willis Fa oe on at een should be so ‘en aumons Ite. pri 
aS SScience 5:62. 1897. 5 
aos SN rears, J. ey - fone 
vols. 8vo. Vol. I, pp. xiv-+224. Vol. II, pp. xiii + 429. —— Sor een 
cc eye 3 London: C. J. Clay & Sons. | Higt- Tos. 6d. 
