482 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 667 



seopical technique, and this is followed by 27 

 pages on the cell, 147 on the structure of 

 phanerogams, and 44 on experimental plant 

 physiology. The topics are well chosen, the 

 directions clear and explicit, while the numer- 

 ous illustrations help to make the text still 

 more easily understood. 



MORE AGRICULTURAL BOTANY 



In preparing a hook on " Forage and Fiber 

 Crops in America " (Orange Judd Co.) for the 

 farmer and the student of agriculture. Pro- 

 fessor Hunt, of Cornell University, has at the 

 same time rendered a valuable service to 

 botany and the botanists. He has brought 

 together many important structural and 

 economic facts in which the general botanist 

 is interested, but which have been difficult of 

 access, because so widely scattered in botanical 

 and agricultural books and periodicals. Here 

 the botanist will find good, if rather popular, 

 descriptions of the common grasses and other 

 plants used for forage, and such fiber plants 

 as cotton, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, etc. The 

 scientific side of the disciissions has been un- 

 usually well done, and the botanist is not con- 

 stantly shocked, as he is too often in books of 

 this kind, by anachronisms in nomenclature 

 and spelling. The illustrations are well 

 selected, and were put in to help the text, 

 and not as pretty pictures to help sell the 

 book. Every picture has its use as fully as 

 every sentence in the text, which is more than 

 can be said of many books, botanical as well 

 as agricultural. 



STUDIES IN PLANT CHEMISTRY 



Under the title " Studies in Plant Chem- 

 istry, and Literary Papers " (Riverside Press) 

 have been collected the papers and addresses 

 of the late Mrs. Helen Abbott Michael. They 

 are of interest to botanists as being among the 

 first of their kind published in this country. 

 They include such titles as " A Chemical 

 Study of Yucca angustifolia " " Certain 

 Chemical Constituents of Plants considered 

 in Eolation to their Morphology and Evolu- 

 tion," " Plant Analysis as an Applied Sci- 

 ence," " The Chemical Basis of Plant Forms," 



" Comparative Chemistry of Higher and 

 Lower Plants," etc. Of the author and her 

 work Dr. Wiley, of Washington, says : " She 

 was among the very first investigators in this 

 country who began in a systematic way to 

 study the relations of chemical composition 

 to species of plants and to plant growth." 

 And again, " The most important result of 

 her investigations pointed out in a clear way 

 the regular existence of certain classes of 

 chemical bodies in certain species of plants." 



Many botanists remember the author of 

 these papers with pleasure as an attractive 

 young woman (Miss Helen C. De S. Abbott) 

 who twenty or more years ago used to be one of 

 the most interested members of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. 

 To a charming personality she added a deep 

 and intelligent interest in the scientific work 

 of the association, especially in chemistry and 

 botany. In the appreciative biographical 

 sketch by Nathan H. Dole, which fills the first 

 hundred pages, we learn much of her life of 

 helpfulness and usefulness, of her marriage, 

 her travels, her scientific and philanthropic 

 plans, and of her untimely death on the 

 twenty-ninth of November, 1904. Her name 

 deserves to be placed high in the short list of 

 scientific women in America, and the botanists 

 especially should remember her as one who 

 wrought well and faithfully in her efforts to 

 add to the upbuilding of a neglected depart- 

 ment of their science. 



Charles E. Bessey 



The Univeksity of Nebraska 



THE DENSITY OF THE ETHERS 



1. The theory that an electric charge must 

 possess the equivalent of inertia was clearly 

 established by J. J. Thomson in the Phil. 

 Mag. for April, 1881. 



2. The discovery of masses smaller than 

 atoms was made experimentally by J. J. 

 Thomson, and communicated to Section A at 

 Dover in 1889. 



3. The thesis that the corpuscles so dis- 

 ' Abstract of a paper read by Sir Oliver Lodge 



before Section A of the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, Leicester, 1907. 



