150 BOTANICAL GAZETTE - [aucusr 
great service to those who are not extreme specialists in the classification of 
seed-plants. The collated literature is supplemented by the large experience 
of the author, so that in a sense the presentation is distinctly a fresh one. 
This book and others like it serve to emphasize the increasing differentiation 
between the specialists in morphology and those in classification. It is no longer 
possible for one man to do justice to both subjects in a single book. One or the 
other dominates in accordance with the larger interest of the author, and the 
other phase receives comparatively scant attention. In the book before us 
taxonomy is dominant, and only that amount of morphology is presented which 
is supposed to be of importance to a specialist in taxonomy. In other books 
morphology is dominant and taxonomy reduced to a bare outline. There is an 
additional complication in the case of seed-plants because of an old morphology 
that belongs to them. The old morphology has more dealings with taxonomy 
than it does with the new morphology, and will doubtless continue to be exploited 
chiefly by taxonomists. Anatomy has already become distinctly differentiated 
as a subject, and the morphologist of either kind has learned to touch it very 
lightly —J. M. C. 
MINOR NOTICES. 
THE ISSUE of the twelfth edition of Pranti’s Lehrbuch der Botanik, under the 
editorship of Dr. Pax,5 indicates that this book holds an assured place among 
German text-books. The present edition has been very slightly enlarged, thou 
brought into line with modern work in many places. Improvements are 
noticeable in many figures and some new ones are introduced. : 
Of its kind the book is excellent, but the kind no longer appeals to sa 
botanists as a model. For it gives 122 pages to anatomy, 53 pages to physiology, 
and 279 to the dreary synopsis of plant families, which we suppose medical Be 
dents and other victims of the required “allgemeine Botanik” are te 
to study—else it would hardly form so dominant a part of all German text- : 
Tt might be well for our German friends to undertake a reform movement 1? 
botanical instruction —C. R. B 
NINETEENTH PART of ENGLER’s Das Pflanzenreich consists of a paar 
tion of Betulaceae by WrnKLER.® The usual critical discussion of st th 
geographic distribution, and systems of classification is followed by pan 
of 83 species recognized as representing 6 genera, all but 11 of the specs 
ing to Betula (37), Carpinus (18), and Alnus (17). In Carpinus 7 2€¥ ye 
are described, and in Betula 3, but none of them belong to the Ane 
Dr. Britton’s 4 new species of Betula recently described’ are referred to 
Addendum as not examined. The conservative tendency of he 78. 
oer stesatet lem _viiit4 
5 Pax, F., Pranti’s Lehrbuch der Botanik. 12th ed. Imp. 8v- PP 
figs. 439 Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. 1904. oe WINKLER, 
° ENGLER, A., Das Pflanzenreich. Heft 19. Betulaceae von Hus 
PP- 149. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. 1904. M 7.60. 
7 Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 31: 165. 1904. 
