June 9, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



823 



teresting and important details regarding these 

 and many other topics, the book itself must be 

 consulted. 



Ecologists will find in this monograph many 

 new expressions and many new points of view, 

 of most of which those will approve who have 

 come to think of the plant as a complex of 

 physiological processes, rather than as an intri- 

 cate object to be described and depicted. The 

 newness of this sort of thinking and the com- 

 plexity of the relations involved have made 

 necessary the employment of a number of new 

 expressions, which may require modification 

 later, but the author is to be congratulated on 

 his general avoidance of words not readily 

 understood by the average intelligence; espe- 

 cially has he avoided that tendency toward 

 ultra-technical, Greek, classificational terms 

 which so hindered real progress during the 

 earlier years of ecological philosophy. He is 

 also to be congratulated on the unusual clear- 

 ness with which he approaches the relation of 

 conditional control — the relation of cause and 

 effect, in the common sense. Effects are not 

 here confused with causes and plants are not 

 endowed with judgment. 



To find fault is as difficult in this case as it 

 always is distasteful, but if fault must be 

 found let it be with reference to a few poorly 

 chosen words, such as vegetistic (for vegeta- 

 tional) and habital (for with regard to habi- 

 tat). The latter seems to the reviewer to be 

 actually ambiguous. 



B. E. Livingston 



Laboratory Manual in General Microbiology. 



By Ward Giltner. John Wiley & Sons. 



Pp. 418. $2.50. 



It is fitting that a laboratory manual in 

 microbiology should come from the labora- 

 tories of Michigan Agricultural College fol- 

 lowing the appearance from the same place of 

 Marshall's " Microbiology." Like the latter 

 book, this manual of Giltner's covers the whole 

 subject included under the term microbiology, 

 so far as to include the study of bacteria, 

 yeasts and molds. The laboratory methods 

 which are here given have been the result of 

 ten years' accmnulation of data in the labora- 

 tory at Michigan and have therefore the merit 



of being thoroughly tested. As a compendium 

 of laboratory methods and as a book of refer- 

 ence the book is very valuable, for there is 

 hardly any phase of the rapidly growing study 

 of these three groups of organisms that is not 

 touched upon. It would hardly be possible to 

 use it as a laboratory course, since it goes over 

 an extent of ground which would be practically 

 impossible to cover in any ordinary course. 

 Indeed, it would be of doubtful wisdom to at- 

 tempt to have any class of students complete 

 such an extensive series of preliminary labo- 

 ratory exercises as a preparation for the real 

 work of a bacteriologist. 



In attempting to cover the whole of the 

 ground of such an extensive study it is inevi- 

 table that some topics should be more satis- 

 factorily treated than others. The whole man- 

 ual shows evidence that it has been developed 

 in an atmosphere of agricultural rather than 

 medical bacteriology. While serum therapy 

 and pathologic bacteriology are treated the 

 treatment assigned to this phase of the sub- 

 ject is less satisfactory than the rest of the 

 manual. An allotment of 34 pages out of 418 

 to the whole subject of serums and pathogenic 

 bacteriology is either too much or too little; 

 too much if the book is designed for agricul- 

 tural and general students only, and too little 

 if aimed at medical students. 



Naturally slight omissions are found here 

 and there which are open to criticism. To 

 recommend in making culture media the use of 

 Witte's peptone only, at this time when Witte's 

 is not to be obtained and when American pep- 

 tones are proving perfectly satisfactory, is 

 surely open to criticism. To omit absolutely 

 any reference to the preparation and use of 

 Endo medium is hardly defensible, consider- 

 ing the extended and growing use of this 

 medium, and to describe the Gram method of 

 staining without even a reference to the need 

 of counter stain after decolorizing can hardly 

 be excused. But slips of this kind can not be 

 avoided in a book with such a wide scope as 

 this, and the manual is surely to be com- 

 mended as one of great value in any bacterio- 

 logical laboratory. 



H. W. Conn 



Wesleyan TJniversitt 



