November 20, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



749 



Scientists, especially, should read the book, if 

 for no other reason than to convince them- 

 selves how metaphysical their scientific hypoth- 

 eses are. 



Louis Trenchard More 

 University of Cincinnati 



Essentials of College Botany. By Charles E. 

 Bessey, Professor in the University of Ne- 

 braska, and Ernest A. Bessey, Professor 

 in the Michigan Agricultural College. 

 American Science Series. The eighth edi- 

 tion revised and entirely rewritten. Henry 

 Holt & Co. 1914. Pp. xiv + 409 with 206 

 illustrations. 



The authorship of this essentially new book 

 is unique in American botanical literature, 

 and as a fitting foreword it is a pleasure to re- 

 call that the senior author has spent over two 

 score of years in the constant and very fruit- 

 ful pursuit of botany. The junior author, 

 the son, was therefore reared in an invigo- 

 rating atmosphere of phytology, since which 

 he has been at the head of the department of 

 botany in the Michigan Agricultural College, 

 the very place where the father began, as an 

 undergraduate, the serious study of the sub- 

 ject conjointly expounded in this text-book 

 fresh from the press. 



As a winning football team is sometimes 

 built up around a star player, so here it is 

 quickly noted that the book in hand has a 

 dominant feature, namely evolution, and its 

 title might well be phytophylogeny. In other 

 words in the groundplan one sees fourteen 

 phyla (branches) of the vegetable kingdom 

 arranged in the order of the probable ap- 

 pearance of their members (species) in point 

 of geologic time. The senior author has long 

 specialized in taxonomy, publishing his re- 

 sults from time to time in pamphlet form, as, 

 for example, "A Synopsis of Plant Phyla" 

 (1907), and now the botanical world welcomes 

 the appearance of the present work in which 

 phylogeny is made the keynote of a text-book. 

 The phylum is the group unit employed for 

 expanding the fundamental doctrine of evo- 

 lution, namely, that the first species were 

 low plants and from them have evolved all 



others, thus making all species genetically 

 related, whether far or near, low or high. The 

 lowest of the fourteen phyla is the myxophyceaa 

 (slime algae) — (the slime fungi find no place 

 in the plant kingdom), and ends with antho- 

 phyta (flowering plants). Each phylum has its 

 separate chapter, in which the dominant fea- 

 ture is considered through " laboratory studies " 

 of types followed by a short bibliography. 

 Thus, for example, " phylum V., phseophycese — 

 the brown algse " has for its characteristic idea 

 the addition of the brown pigment, with which 

 certain structural features are associated. This 

 phylum is a lateral divergence from the main 

 evolutionary stem. Again "phylum Viii., 

 bryophyta — the mossworts," is derived from 

 the Chlorophycese (simple algse), shows (a) 

 obvious alternation of generations, (&) begin- 

 nings of conductive tissue and (c) the mem- 

 bers grow upon land. " Laboratory studies," 

 as usual, are given under the classes, namely, 

 liverworts and mosses. 



The last chapter, and last phylum, deals with 

 anthophyta (flowering plants) and includes 

 more than a half of all known plant species. 

 In the laboratory the pupil will here receive 

 the instruction that usually is found in the 

 early pages of the less modem text-books. This 

 chapter closes with a tabulation of the " greater 

 steps " in the development of the highest 

 from the lowest plants. 



While the method here followed is logical 

 from the evolutionary viewpoint, as a matter 

 of fact many pupils get into college seriously 

 deficient in botanical perspective, and therefore 

 a few preliminary lessons upon the more evi- 

 dent parts of the higher plants and something 

 of their functions would be advantageous be- 

 fore " making the plunge " into the depths of 

 protoplasm, the most complex of all substances 

 when measured by its boundless activities and 

 possibilities. Therefore it might not be a 

 crime to begin the class with a portion of this 

 last chapter, thus bringing the pupils even by 

 way of review in closer touch with the world- 

 wide out-of-door botany. Next to kinship is 

 social relations, and one wishes that the pupils 

 might be introduced to plant societies, that is, 

 to the environmental factors, namely, ecology. 



