August 12, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



217 



in ' I'Acerba,' by Cecco d'Ascoli, is of the 

 vaguest description. 



A curious misquotation occurs in the bib- 

 liography of the older literature contained in 

 Agassiz's ' Poissons Fossiles,' where ' Les Ob- 

 servations sur I'histoire naturelle, sur la phy- 

 sique/ etc., ' an anonymous work in six vol- 

 umes,' is credited to Gauthier. The title ob- 

 viously refers to the journal conducted for ■ 

 twenty years under that name by the Abbe 

 Eozier, and continued after 1794 as the Jow- 

 nal de Physique. The author of the alleged 

 anonymous communication on Bolca fishes 

 cited by Agassiz at the end of his bibliography 

 was the celebrated geologist Albert Fortis, his 

 correspondence with Testa having been col- 

 lected and published in book form by Count 

 Gazola in 1793 and 1794. 



To devote attention to minor minutss of this 

 nature will no doubt be esteemed by many as 

 'time elaborately thrown away.' But it must 

 be conceded that accuracy even in smaller 

 matters possesses an intrinsic virtue, and is 

 as well worth striving for as are the third 

 and fourth decimal places in mathematics, 

 Cui 1)0710 may not be translated into the par- 

 lance of ideal scholarship. 



C. E. Eastman. 



Harvard Univeesitt, 

 Cambridge, Mass. 



see that we have here a rational and logical 

 presentation of this much-abused and gen- 

 erally badly taught subject. 



From Professor Clements we have in the 

 table of contents of an ecological work by him, 

 now in press, a similar outline of another 

 phase of the subject. This work (which will 

 cover about 300 pages) is to be devoted to re- 

 search methods in ecology, treated under four 

 heads or chapters : (1) foundations of ecology, 

 (2) the habitat, (3) the plant formation and 

 (4) experimental ecology. Under the first are 

 discussed the need of and the essentials of a 

 system in ecology; under the second, the fac- 

 tors (water content, humidity, light, tempera- 

 ture, wind, precipitation, air-pressure, soil, 

 etc.) and their measurement by instruments. 

 The third chapter deals with the methods of 

 research, the quadrat, transect, migration 

 circle, photography, cartography and herbaria. 

 In the fourth chapter, devoted to experimental 

 ecology, the purpose and the scope are set 

 forth, followed by a discussion of methods of 

 field experiment, control experiments, com- 

 parative morphology and competition cultures. 

 A book of this kind should go far towards 

 correcting the 'looseness which has character- 

 ized too much of the work in ecology. It is 

 to be brought out by the botanical seminar of 

 the University of Nebraska. 



BOTANICAL N0TE8. 



ecological plant studies. 

 Professor Atkinson has recently issued a 

 pamphlet of sixty-seven pages giving the out- 

 lines of a course of twenty-one lectures on the 

 relation of plants to environment, delivered 

 in the Summer School of Cornell University 

 in 1903 and 1904. Contrary to the views of 

 some ' ecologists,' the professor devotes a good 

 deal of time (nine lectures) to a study of the 

 structure of plants, under such headings as 

 the organization of the plant, plant tissues, 

 types of stems, foliage-leaves, root, flower- 

 shoot, pollination, fruit and distribution, be- 

 fore taking up ecology proper. Under the 

 latter appear such titles as ecological factors, 

 vegetation types, plant migration, plant forma- 

 tions, forest societies, etc. While these lec- 

 tures are merely outlined, it is not difiicult to 



animals in . the plant kingdom. 

 No doubt many a botanist has felt that 

 quite too many animal-like organisms have 

 been included in the plant kingdom in recent 

 years. The slime molds were originally in- 

 cluded upon their superficial resemblance to 

 the puff-balls, at a time when anything like 

 a critical study of the biology of the organisms 

 was unknown. De Bary long ago placed the 

 slime molds ' outside the limits of the vege- 

 table kingdom,' yet they are persistently re- 

 tained in botanical manuals, and systems of 

 plants. ,Thus they still hold their place in 

 Engler's ' Syllabus der Pflanzenf amilien ' in 

 spite of his statement — ' kein Anschluss an 

 hohere Pflanzen.' Scientific consistency cer- 

 tainly demands their removal from the plant 

 system. With them, also, should be cast out 

 some much more recent animal intruders — the 



