BOOK REVIEWS 

 An Introduction to Botany* 



R. C. Benedict 



A new textbook in botany starts out with a difficult task to 

 accomplish — it must make a place for itself in competition with 

 a considerable number of existing volumes, practically all of 

 which are of good quality. In a list of twenty or so botanies 

 which bear an imprint within the past ten years, differentiation 

 is not so much the quality of scholarship and presentation as in 

 the general design of the books, the phases of subject matter 

 emphasized, and the extensiveness and intensiveness of the 

 treatment. 



The new Haupt stands almost certainly at or near the ex- 

 treme of simplicity of treatment and limitation of scope, in 

 keeping with its announced design for use in a one-semestral 

 course in botany, or in one term of a year course in biology. It 

 may be granted that the author has achieved his aim in some 

 respects; the text is generally clear, almost purely descriptive; 

 intensive treatment of any topic is rigorously avoided. At the 

 same time the general facts of plant structure and nutrition, 

 reproduction, classification, and genetics are adequately and 

 accurately covered in their bare essentials. The illustrations are 

 of high quality, with many photographs and drawings by the 

 author. 



While undoubtedly there are not a few classes and institu- 

 tions where such a restricted text will be welcome, the reviewer 

 believes that a college botany text should make more demands 

 upon its readers, and offer guidance to the ambitious student to 

 go beyond the volume in hand. There are no bibliographies in 

 this volume. Also, some use of the heuristic method, so care- 

 fully worked out in the Sinnott, might well have been made. 

 The McGraw-Hill Co., has certainly issued the two extremes of 

 thoroughness of treatment, in the Haupt at one end, and the 

 Hill, Overholts, and Popp at the other. 



* Haupt, Arthur W. An introduction to botany. McGraw-Hill, 1938. $3.00. 



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