154 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [FEBRUARY 
courses equally valuable. It cannot be too often repeated that only the incom- 
petent slavishly follow courses prescribed by other teachers. Each really good 
teacher is obliged to make his own in details, though he may follow another's 
general plan. 
The book certainly does not overshoot its audience. One who is familiar 
with the teaching of botany in schools of the upper Mississippi valley and west- 
ward is tempted to think that Professor Lioyp’s ideal has already been realized 
and perhaps even surpassed in a considerable number of the better high schools; 
and he wonders whether the book is not better adapted to the teachers and schools 
of the North Atlantic states, which, in the teaching of science, have certainly 
lagged behind the less conservative western ones. 
It would be of no service to attempt to summarize the author’s discussions, 
which will well repay serious consideration, and should be read both by the college 
man and the secondary teacher.—C. R. B 
A monograph on transpiration. 
‘THE ABSOLUTE necessity that the investigator be thoroughly cognizant of 
what others have done and thought in his field, together with the ever-increasing 
hopelessness of coping with this task, offer probably the most serious discourage- 
ment to the scientific man. This difficulty, however, can be very much lessened 
by the publication from time to time of exhaustive monographs in restricted fields. 
the whole subject of transpiration,” a subject whose literature has been extraor- 
dinarily difficult to compass. The book is a natural growth from the author's 
three previous bibliographical and critical papers on this subject, Materialien 2u 
einer Monographie betreffend die Erscheinungen der Transpiration der Pflanzen, 
which appeared from 1887 to 1901, but it is much more than a bringing of these up 
to date; it is not a mere critical bibliography but a thorough treatise on the various 
phases of the subject. New experimental data are scattered through the work, 
being presented in connection with the discussion of the several questions involved. 
Besides true transpiration, we have also discussed here the allied phenomeno?, 
guttation, in a chapter which is altogether the best treatment that this subject has 
yet received. A very complete bibliography occupies thirty-three pages at 
end of the volume, a Niigata in which reviews are uniformly noted as well 
as the articles themselves 
The subject-matter is , divided logically into thirty chapters, each of which 
deals with a certain part of the general field. The headings of some of these at 
as follows: Methods of investigation, Light in general, Light rays of certain 
refrangibility, Atmospheric carbon dioxid, Air temperature, Humidity, Air move 
ments, Chemicals, Periodicity, Guttation, etc. The language is clear and concise 
? BURGERSTEIN, ALFRED, Die Se apeig der Pflanzen. Imp. 8vo. pp- x +283, 
jigs. 24. Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1904. M 7. 
