CURRENT LETERATURE. 
BOOK REVIEWS. 
A college botany. 
PROFESSOR ATKINSON has revised and elaborated his Elementary Botany 
for college use. An elementary college text that includes all of the great divisions 
of botany seems to be in demand, at least according to the judgment of publishers. 
Perhaps the demand is both true and just, but it is a large one to make of a single 
author, who is supposed to be, from the college standpoint, either a morphologist, 
a physiologist, or an ecologist. One looks for inequality of grasp under such 
circumstances, unless the presentation is so elementary that it hardly belongs to 
a modern college course. 
In spite of this disadvantage, Professor ATKINSON has covered the whole 
general field in a way that indicates an unusually wide familiarity with the various 
divisions of the subiect. The parts dealing with physiclogy and morphology are 
largely elaborations of the same parts in the elementary text, introducing the new 
material suited to more advanced students and bringing certain parts up to date. 
The part dealing with ecology, however, has been entirely reorganized, and 
represents the first presentation of ecology in an American textbook from the 
college standpoint. 
In the organization of the text, part one (pp. 135) deals with physiology, part 
two (pp. 207) with morphology, part three (pp. 115) with the ecology of plant mem. 
bers, part four (pp. 184) with plant associations, and part five (pp. 65) with repre- 
sentative families of Angiosperms. The space given to the different parts repre- 
sents a balance unusually well-maintained for books of this type. There is 
always a temptation to overdo the part in which the author is especially interested. 
Professor ATKINSON believes in numerous and good illustrations, with as 
many of them original as possible; and hence the volume is full of fresh and 
suggestive illustrations, and should be of great service to college classes in ele- 
mentary botany.—J. M. C. 
Handbook of plant morphology. 
The friends of ArTHUR, BARNES, and Coutter’s Handbook of Plant Dis- 
section, published in 1886, will be glad to know that this helpful laboratory guide 
has been rewritten, thus bringing it again in touch with the best methods of ele- 
mentary instruction. The authors have delegated the revision to other hands, 
and both for this reason and on account of changes necessitated by recent devel- 
opments in botany, it is perhaps fitting that the new edition should appear under 
* ATKINSON, GEORGE Francis, A college text-book of botany. pp. xvit737- 
figs. 592. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1905. $2.00. 
424 [JUNE 
