512 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 378. 



has thought it worth his while to write an 

 introduction to the book at once bespeaks our 

 good opinion. A glance at the pages is suffi- 

 cient to show that in this we are not mis- 

 taken. There is, first, a short chapter giving 

 such information as is necessary in the study 

 of the tree in winter, followed by fourteen 

 chapters on groups of trees, as 'The Horse- 

 chestnut' (including also the Ohio buckeye), 

 'The Maples' (including seven species), 'The 

 Ashes' (four species), 'The Walnuts and 

 Hickories' (six species), etc. The illustra- 

 tions are exquisite, consisting of 'half-tone' 

 reproductions of characteristic photographs. 

 The colored plates are especially fine, that of 

 a cross-section of an oak trunk being really 

 so perfect that one must run his hand over 

 the plate to convince himself that it is not 

 an actual section of the wood. While the 

 book is printed and bound in a style quite too 

 elegant for a text-book for schools, the subject 

 matter is well adapted for such usage. A less 

 expensive edition for schools should be 

 brought out by the publishers, and in such 

 form it should have wide use in the ijublic 

 schools. 



gattingee's flora op Tennessee. 

 It speaks well for a state when its legisla- 

 ture authorizes the publication of a book on 

 technical botany. This was done a little less 

 than a year ago by the legislature of Tennes- 

 tiee in ' an act for the acceptance by the state 

 of a work on botany prepared by Dr. A. Gat- 

 tinger, and to make an appropriation for its 

 publication and distribution.' The result is 

 before us in the form of a neatly printed book 

 of nearly three hundred pages. That the 

 pages are marred by too many typographical 

 slips is not the fault of the generous-minded 

 men who made provision for its publication, 

 nor of the venerable author, but of the inex- 

 perienced printer, to whom much of what he 

 put into type must have been quite unintel- 

 ligible. The book opens with about twenty 

 pages of prefatory matter, in part historical; 

 the remainder is devoted to a discussion of 

 regional distribution of plants, and this is 

 followed by about 160 pages devoted to an 

 annotated list of the Pteridophyta and Sper- 

 matophyta of the state. Following this are 



about a hundred pages, entitled, the 'Philoso- 

 phy of Botany,' including several papers of 

 very unequal value. In the list of plants the 

 modern system, as well as the modern nomen- 

 clature, is used, the latter being none other 

 than that of the so-called 'Rochester Rules,' 

 which he says he 'reluctantly adopted' after 

 careful deliberation. This useful list is, there- 

 fore, another contribution to the more general 

 use of the names recommended by the 

 'Rochester School' of systematic botanists, 

 and is a sign of no small significance of the 

 inevitable trend of botanical opinion and 

 practice in this country. 



The species noted are 2,218, of which 234 

 are CompositEe; 81, Labiatse; 52, Umbellif erae ; 

 172, Malvacea;; 251, Euphorbiacese ; 103, 

 Papilionacese ; 83, Rosaceae; 57, Cruciferae; 61, 

 Moracese; 124, Cyperacese; 223, Gramineae; 

 15, Coniferae; 61, Pteridophyta. 



engler's pflanzenreich. 

 Heften 7 and 8 of this work have 

 appeared within the past few weeks. Number 

 7 is devoted to the little group of water plants 

 known as the Naiads (Naiadaceae), and is 

 from the hand of A. B. Rendle, of the British 

 Museum. We have in this number a promise 

 of what we may look for in the future, since 

 this one has the general discussion in English, 

 instead of in German, as has been the rule 

 heretofore. It is quite novel to have a 'part' 

 of a book in which three languages are used, 

 the technical parts being in Latiii, as usual, 

 while some of the notes under the species are 

 in German. In this paper the author restricts 

 the family to the genus Naias, in which he 

 recognizes thirty-two species. Number 8 

 takes up the maples (Aceraceas), and the work 

 is done by Dr. Ferdinand Pax, of the Univer- 

 sity of Breslau. Two genera are recognized, 

 Dipteronia, a monotypic Chinese genus, and 

 Acer, the maples proper. The latter genus is 

 divided into thirteen sections, and all told, 113 

 species are described. In accordance with the 

 latest conceptions of generic lines the box-el- 

 ders (Negundo) are included in Acer. It is in- 

 teresting to note that Dr. Pax has adopted A. 

 saccharnum L. as the name of the silver maple 

 (instead of A. dasycarpum Ehrh.) and A. sac- 



