October 28, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



597 



" All known to me are later than the discovery, 

 and none have been found in ancient burials." 

 He is fully sustained by facts in his historic doubt 

 ' that wampum belts were made by the prehis- 

 toric Indians. ' When the New York bulletins 

 on archseologj' reach the use of shell articles, I 

 hope, should I prepare that paper, to show this 

 in detail. The material is in hand, but not yet 

 arranged. Meanwhile it is certain that the 

 early interior inhabitants of New York knew 

 little of shell beads at all. 



W. M. Beauchamp. 



SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

 Practical Plant Physiology ; an Introduction to 

 Original Research for Students and Teachers 

 of Natural Science, Medicine, Agriculture and 

 Forestry. By De. "W. Detmee, Professor of 

 Botany in the University of Jena. Trans- 

 lated from the second German edition by S. 

 A. MooE, M. A. (Camb.), F. L. S., Principal 

 of the Girasia College, Gondal, Kathiawad, 

 India. With one hundred and eighty-four 

 illustrations. New York, The Macmillan 

 Co.; London, Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. 

 1898. 8vo. Pp. xix + 555. Price, $3.00. 

 The laboratory method of study finds varia- 

 ble application in the several departments of 

 botany, but in none is it so typically and profit- 

 ably serviceable as in the domain of physiology. 

 The strong chemical and physical bias which 

 pervades the subject permits almost every 

 vital operation of the plant to be brought under 

 control by chemical or physical methods. As 

 changes and movements in plants are usually 

 slow, the greatest delicacy of njethod and 

 apparatus is often required to secure intelligible 

 results. In consequence of these facts the labo- 

 ratory part of instruction in vegetable physiol- 

 ogy is destined to become varied and extensive, 

 and to take form slowly. 



It is to the credit of Dr. Detmer, of Jena, 

 that he presented to the botanical public the 

 first manual in any language for the guidance 

 of the student in vegetable physiology. It was 

 a work of over 350 pages, issued in 1888, and 

 although at the time it was said by some of his 

 colleagues not adequately to represent the cur- 

 rent state of the science, yet time has shown 

 that for an initial work it was exceptionally 



well achieved, and that to produce a more rep- 

 resentative and serviceable volume has been a 

 task that few have since attempted. After a 

 decade the work has passed into a second edi- 

 tion, so much changed and amplified as to 

 almost constitute it a new book, but retaining^ 

 the characteristics that have made its prede- 

 cessor so acceptable to many instructors and 

 students. 



Although a French edition appeared in 1890^ 

 no English version has been prepared until the 

 present time. That it has now been made 

 available to the English-speaking student will 

 be welcome information to many instructors 

 who have heretofore made less use of the work 

 than desired. It is gratifying to find that the 

 translation has been well done, and that it ade- 

 quately expresses not only the facts of the vol- 

 ume, but the sense of the author's personal in- 

 terest, which lends a charm to both German 

 and English versions. An unusual feature of 

 the translation is the rendering of the whole 

 volume without addition or alteration. This is, 

 in some respects, a good method, as one receives 

 from the hands of the translator the unsophisti- 

 cated result of the author's labor, but when it 

 extends to the translation of an appendix giv- 

 ing the places in Germany where apparatus 

 may be obtained, it seems as if the substitution 

 of names of firms in the countries where the 

 book is expected to be used would have been a 

 meritorious deviation. 



The outline of the work embraces the food of 

 plants, the molecular forces in plants, metabolic 

 processes, movements of growth and movements 

 of irritation. It contains but little matter not 

 truly a part of physiology, according to strict 

 interpretation of the term. The two hundred 

 experiments, or, more properly speaking, stud- 

 ies, into which the work is divided, cover a great 

 variety of topics and are drawn largely from the 

 memoirs of the most distinguished investigators. 

 But it is to the labors of the author in testing, 

 modifying and adapting the experiments to the 

 condition of pedagogical requirement that give 

 them much of their value in this connection. 



It would be easy to find fault with some parts 

 of the work. The first experiments given in 

 the book, those of water cultures, are likely to 

 prove discouraging to the beginner, as they re- 



