August 26, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



279 



ical purposes, and for irrigation in regions 

 where long droughts are periodically experi- 

 enced. In many such localities, by means of 

 " storing, diverting and distributing the flood 

 water of a river or rivers," the land has been 

 reclaimed from the desert and made capable 

 of supporting a large and prosperous popu- 

 lation. 



F. P. Gulliver 



Die Palaeohotanische Literatur-BMiograph- 



iscJie Uhersicht uber die Arheiten aus dem 



Gebiete der Palaeohotanih. Von W. J. 



JoNGMANS. Erster Band: Die Erschein- 



ungen des Jahres 1908. 



Gustav Fischer, of Jena, has just issued 

 the first volume of a proposed annual bibliog- 

 raphy and index of contributions to paleo- 

 botany compiled by "W. J. Jongmans, of the 

 Eoyal Herbarium at Leiden. 



In considering a work of this sort one nat- 

 urally surveys the field that it aims to cover 

 and what agencies already attempt to cover 

 this field. General paleobotanical reviews pub- 

 lished periodically were commenced by the 

 late Marquis Saporta and ably continued after 

 his death by Professor Zeiller in the Revue 

 Oenerale de Botanique. These have always 

 been valuable summaries of paleobotanical 

 progress. The Geologisches Centralhlatt at- 

 tempts to cover paleobotanical literature but 

 the work is so poorly done and incomplete that 

 it is of little value. The Botanisches Oentral- 

 hlatt covers the field of paleobotany much 

 more thoroughly, but there are so many con- 

 tributors that the reviews lack balance, an in- 

 significant paper often occupying more space 

 than one of importance. The Eoyal Society 

 catalogue attempts to cover the paleobotanical 

 field in much the same manner as the work 

 under discussion, the chief criticism in the 

 case of the former being the slowness of pub- 

 lication, the very serious number of omissions 

 and the over-elaborated system of arrangement 

 and citation. 



In addition to these general bibliographies 

 the Torrey Botanical Club publishes each 

 month a briefly annotated bibliography of 

 contributions to American botany, including 



paleobotany, and the United States Geological 

 Survey publishes at intervals bibliographies 

 by years of contributions to American geology 

 and paleontology also covering paleobotany 

 and indexed systematically, but neither of 

 these in so far as they refer to fossil plants 

 are as well done as the work before us, and 

 the limited field they cover make them far less 

 valuable, particularly since it is not difficult to 

 keep up with what is coming out in one's own 

 country. 



It would appear then that there is a distinct 

 opportunity for an annual publication of just 

 the kind that Jongmans has given us. 



The first part contains an alphabetical cata- 

 logue of the papers which have appeared in 

 1908, arranged by authors, and in a rather 

 careful examination no omissions have been 

 discovered, although it is too much to expect 

 that there are none such. A minor defect 

 noticed is that the same work, as for example 

 Engler's Jahrbuch is cited in several dif- 

 ferent ways. The second part, also ar- 

 ranged alphabetically, is a systematic list of 

 species, genera and other botanical groups 

 described or merely referred to by the vari- 

 ous authors in their comparative discus- 

 sions, including also the living plants with 

 which the fossil plants are compared, and the 

 various geological horizons. A chance quota- 

 tion will show the character and scope of this 

 part: " Aleihopteris lonchiia Schl. — Karbon, 

 North Derbyshire — Horwood (2), p. 6, PI. A, 

 Eig. 1." Synonyms are given a place and 

 their equivalence as determined by the various 

 authors are indicated, so that the work is a 

 complete compendium of all that is being done 

 along paleobotanical lines throughout the 

 world, and the reader can get a very tolerable, 

 even if skeletal, idea of the character and con- 

 tents of every paper published, something that 

 it is not always easy to do from the titles of 

 papers. 



If the high standard of this first volume is 

 continued and subsequent years appear more 

 promptly the work will prove well nigh indis- 

 pensable to every student who wishes to keep 

 informed of the rapidly increasing flood of 

 paleobotanical investigation. The author and 



