544 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol.. U., Xo. 37. 



of the delta. These facts are the property of 

 the public, which has not failed to appreciate 

 the heroic qualities exhibited, nor to observe 

 that the disastrous result of this unfortunate 

 expedition offers in great part its own expla- 

 nation. If it teach the aspiring that mere un- 

 instructed courage cannot take the place of 

 science, De Long and his people will not have 

 died in vain. That this lesson should be es- 

 peciallj' emphasized, from recent events in 

 another part of the arctic regions, will occur to 

 most of our readers. Perhaps it would be well 

 to permit future candidates for such work to con- 

 vince themselves by trial, that the most exalted 

 braver3- will not enable the inexperienced to 

 milk a fractious cow ; and that, if so simple a 

 matter requires knowledge and experience, it 

 may be well to hesitate before assuming the 

 fearful responsibility of hazarding the lives of 

 even willing subordinates, without reasonable 

 preparation for the problems offered by all se- 

 rious arctic work, whether of exploration or 

 retreat. Tenderness toward the dead should 

 not be for an instant permitted to befog this 

 self-evident truth, the statement of which is a 

 dutj" owed, not merelj' to those who maj' here- 

 after attempt arctic exploration, but on behalf 

 of scientific training everj-where. 



STEP'S PLANT-LIFE. 



Plant-life : popular papers on the phenomena of botany. 

 By Edward Step. With 148 illustrations drawn 

 by the author, and engraved by W. M. R. Quick. 

 New York, i/o;i§- Co., 1883. 12 + 218p. 12°. 



Yeak by year there is what ma3' be termed 

 a noticeable amelioration in the character of 

 the botanical literature which appears in this 

 country. By this we mean no discourtesy to 

 the authors of the many excellent works which 

 have appeared from time to time. In certain 

 scientific lines, the botanical literature of the 

 United States has been both voluminous and 

 of a high order of excellence. In sj-stematic 

 botanj', the publications of Torrey, Graj', 

 Eaton, and Watson (to mention only a few of 

 the later workers) have not been excelled any- 

 where. We may justly feel a national pride in 

 such magnificent books as the two volumes of 

 the Botany of California, the Botany of the 

 Clarence King reports and of the Wheeler re- 

 ports, the Ferns of North America, etc. Then, 

 too, our school and college books have been 

 worthy of their authors. What countrj' was 

 ever supplied with better field-manuals than 

 Gray's or Wood's? and where can one find as 

 good a treatise on the morphology of the pha- 



nerogams as Dr. Gray has given us in the 

 latest edition of liis Structural botan3-? 



All these, however, are for students and 

 botanists proper. Tiiey were not designed for 

 the general reader, — the man who does not 

 take botany- in such dreadful earnest as do the 

 botanists, but who asks of the gentle science 

 that it shall please and amuse him. Our scien- 

 tific botanists have been too busy with the 

 serious matter of instructing their classes of 

 voung people in school and college, to turn 

 aside and furnish entertaining reading for the 

 unbotanical. We can scarcely blame them for 

 thus neglecting the great outside world, when 

 the small world of the classroom required all 

 their time and strength ; and yet we cannot 

 help feehng that it would have been better for 

 the botanists, as well as for botany itself, 

 had thej' compelled themselves to find time 

 for those lighter works which have, in other 

 countries, been at once the recreation of the 

 scientific man and the pleasure of the general 

 reader. 



In the work before us we have an example 

 of what ma3' be done in the way of putting the 

 main facts of biological botany before the un- 

 botanical in plain and eas}- English, and in 

 such a wa}' as to be attractive and interesting. 

 We wish its English author were an American ; 

 but, that being an impossibilit}", it is most 

 gratifying that the Messrs. Holt have brought 

 out so neat an American edition. 



It is, of course, to be expected that there is 

 nothing new botanically in such a book; so 

 that those who are fairly well equipped with a 

 knowledge of recent botanical literature need 

 not take it up in the hope of gleaning an}' new 

 facts. It is onl}' what its titlepage indicates, 

 — an aggregation of popular papers on some of 

 the phenomena of botanj-. Thej' are not pro- 

 found, nor are thej' so arranged as to present 

 themselves as a series of connected lessons. 

 Thej' are rather like lightly drawn sketches, — 

 now of this interesting view of a portion of the 

 plant- world, and now of that. Thus we have 

 a chapter on microscopic plants, another on 

 plant structure and growth, one on the ferti- 

 lization of flowers, followed by others on pred- 

 atory plants, remarkable flowers and leaves, 

 and about a fern. Then wo have the folk-lore 

 of plants, plants and animals, mosses and 

 lichens, etc. So the chapters (fourteen in all) 

 run on through the book, there being a de- 

 lightful alternation of the structural with those 

 which deal with sentimental or poetical con- 

 siderations. 



Considering the nature of the book, the 

 errors are remarkably few. Here and there, 



