December 17, 1886.] 



SCIEl^CE, 



571 



spondence with La Marck seems to have preju- 

 diced him against the ' moral ' characters of the 

 revolution, — Necker, Bailly, and Lafayette, — 

 whom he scarcely mentions without a sneer. The 

 removal of the king arid assembly to Paris is put 

 down to "the extreme vanity of Lafayette, who 

 wanted them there merely to increase his own 

 honor and glory."' The starvation " gave Lafay- 

 ette an opportunity to pose as savior of the mon- 

 archy." In the matter of the suspensive veto, 

 Necker ' ' acted vainly and foolishly on the plan 

 which Lafayette had vainly and foolishly in- 

 vented." What was criminal in Lafayette at the 

 Hotel de Castries, it becomes a virtue in Mirabeau 

 to defend. In short, Mr. Stephens feels something 

 of the rancor which Mirabeau felt when "every at- 

 tempt of Mirabeau to unite himself to Necker and 

 Lafayette had been spurned by those vain and 

 conceited men." On the other hand, the double 

 dealing of Mirabeau when he was in the pay of 

 the court is put down as masterly statesmanship, 

 and his want of principle is almost made a proof 

 of his greatness. Nothing is said of the difficul- 

 ties of Lafayette's position, which exposed him to 

 attack from both sides ; of his chivalrous loyalty 

 to the court, yet sympathy with the popular 

 cause ; or of the high opinion entertained of him 

 by the best contemporary critics. 



There is much new and interesting matter in 

 the account of the elections to the states-general, 

 and of the local cahiers of grievances. Mr. 

 Stephens is a lover of exact detail, perhaps at 

 times overloading his history with biographical 

 minutiae. There are also sketches of the economic 

 and financial state of France in connection with 

 the views of the foremost thinkers (to whom the 

 evils of the internal douanes suggested the doc- 

 trine of fi'ee trade), showing the results of the issue 

 of a paper currency and of the wasteful system of 

 taxation. The theory (p. 176) that the burning of 

 chateaux was due to the desire of the copyhold 

 tenants to get possessionof their court-rolls seems 

 a little strained to any one who has read con- 

 temporary accounts of the condition of the French 

 peasantry. Points made very clear are the un- 

 practical character of the constituent assembly, 

 with its ' theory of irregular verbs,' — the reasons 

 why it was left behind by the provinces in the 

 march of ideas, — and the widening gulf between 

 the bourgeois and lower classes, especially the 

 ouvriers, who suffered from protective trade asso- 

 ciations. 



Enough has been said to show that Mr. Stephens 

 has produced a work A^hich promises to rank 

 among the standard authorities on the period, and 

 which will be of sterling historical value to the 

 student of modern democracy. 



VINES' S LECTURES ON THE PHYSIOLOGY 

 OF PLANTS. 



There has long been felt the need of a good 

 text-book on vegetable physiology in the EngUsh 

 language, and hence we heartily welcome the ap- 

 pearance of this excellent treatise. The investiga- 

 tion of the phenomena of plant-growth, nutrition, 

 respiration, metabolism, reproduction, etc., has of 

 recent years been almost entirely accomplished by 

 the Germans, and the prominent part they have 

 taken in these researches will be at once apparent 

 to the reader of Professor Vines's work. As the 

 title indicates, the volume is an expansion of the 

 author's lectures on the subject, and these are 

 twenty-three in number. Nearly ten years have 

 elapsed since its preparation was begun, ill health 

 and the pressure of official duties having retarded 

 its publication. 



Lecture I., as introductory, treats of the general 

 features of the vegetable cell, its cell- wall, and its 

 contents, Protococcus and yeast being used as ex- 

 amples with references to the tissue systems of 

 multicellular plants. Then follow two chapters 

 on the structure and properties of the cell, in 

 which are discussed the growth, thickening, and 

 lignification of the wall ; its optical properties ; 

 and its incrusting mineral matters, — oxalate and 

 carbonate of lime, and silica ; the protoplasmic 

 contents and the nucleus ; the vacuole and the 

 cell-sap. The molecular structure of organized 

 bodies is then considered. An account is given of 

 ' imbibition,' or capacity of organized matter for 

 absorbing water. The rival theories of Naegeli 

 and Strasburger are compared; 'and the latter 

 appears to be favored by the author, though 

 farther on in the book reference is made to 

 Naegeli's micellar hypothesis. In this connection 

 allusion is made to Hale's old experiment of put- 

 ting peas to soak in an iron pot with a leaden 

 cover on which was placed a weight of 184 

 pounds : the force generated by imbibition was 

 sufficient to raise the cover and weight. Here we 

 also find an instructive discussion of the osmotic 

 properties of the cell, and it is pointed out that 

 substances may be transferred from cell to cell by 

 means of the connecting threads of protoplasm as 

 well as by osmosis. 



Lecture IV. is on the absorption of water by 

 root-hairs and the epidermal cells of rootlets, and 

 is full of important information for the agricul- 

 turist. The structure of soils, the action of acid 

 cell-sap, which saturates the absorbing organs and 

 brings salts insoluble in water alone into solution, 

 are described, and numerous analyses of the ash 

 of plants are given. The discussion of the absorp- 



Lectures on the physiology of plants. By Sydney Howard 

 ViNEP. Cambridge, University press, 188C. 8"=. 



