CURRENT LITERATURE 465 
The original reports of the officers of this expedition are lost to the world, perhaps 
forever, but THEOPHRASTUs had access to them, and has presented their observa- 
on plants, together with his own. Bretzt, the author of the work, believes 
that THEOPHRASTUs deserves to rank among the great botanists of the world, 
“and that he was the only great botanist of antiquity, so far as we have record. 
_ Pury, in comparison, is regarded as an inaccurate copyist. It is certainly 
_ femarkable that at the very earliest dawn of botanical study so many correct 
_ observations should be made, observations, too, which have commonly been 
Jost sight of even until now. Nearly all of the important observations made by 
_ Txropprastus have been reported as original by modern botanists. 
ia A few of the more striking contributions made by the Greeks may be here 
mentioned. Mangrove swamps were reported about the Persian Gulf, and 
this record is the only one we have of them; they have not yet been “originally” 
_ feported by modern botanists; SCHIMPER says that, with the exception of Avi- 
_ Cnnia, mangroves have not been seen west of the Indus. The descriptions of 
_ the mangroves are so exact that one has no trouble in making out the character 
__ Species as we now know them. The zonal relations of the species were noted, 
_ Rhizophora being correctly regarded as the pioneer. It was inexplicable to them, 
a it is to us still, that plants, and particularly trees, could grow in salt water. 
~ Similar geographic studies were made in the deserts of Beluchistan, and there, 
as in the mangrove swamps, the character plants were described as such. ‘THEO- 
PHRASTUS used a series of leaf types in his descriptions, based largely on ecological 
is features; more than two thousand years later, HUMBOLDT made out a similar 
_ Series, and largely because of this has been generally regarded as the father of 
Plant geography. The nyctitropic movements of the tamarind leaf are care- 
fully described and are definitely termed sleep movements, distinction being made 
y ween leaves of that type and those of Mimosa. The banyan is correctly 
Tegarded as a fig, and the supporting roots are called roots and not stems, because 
they are leafless, and not green; their adventitious character is also noted. Com- 
Pound leaves are so regarded in spite of the leaf-like appearance of the leaflets; 
the reasons given are the fall of the entire structure in autumn, and the fact that 
i the buds the leaflets are not differentiated. The sexuality of plants is clearly 
- Shown, especially in cucurbits and dates, and use is made of the terms male and 
femal Nearly two thousand years later, CAMERARIUS again showed the sexuality 
Plants, although it was late in the century just past before it was universally 
accepted —Hrnry C. Cowes. nee 
Sg 
Biological statistics. . 
Davenport’s Statistical methods+ has been revised and enlarged and made 
embody all the more important recent developments in the aia 
analysis of variation in living organisms, as elaborated chiefly by PEARSON an 
* Davenport, C. B., Statistical methods with special reference to biological itl 
- 2d. ed. 16mo. pp. viii+223. figs. 10. 1904. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 
Feview of first edition see Bor. GAz. 28: 364. 1899. 
