34 



one floret is then followed through the Aveneae, after which 

 we pass to the pedicelled o«e-flowered spikelet as illustrated in 

 the Agrostideae; thence to the sessile spikelet in the one-flowered 

 spike of the Chlorideae, and finally to the highly specialized 

 structures of Mazieae, Phalarideae, Oryzeae and Zizanieae. 

 After thus completing the series Poateae, the more complex 

 Panicateae are taken up in the same order, beginning with the 

 single fertile floret of the Paniceae, and passing through the 

 paired spikelets of Andropogoneae to the highly complicated 

 inflorescence of Tripsaceae. The primary characters of the 

 tribes are then summed up in a key, in which the spikelet and 

 inflorescence of each tribe are illustrated by a careful diagram- 

 matic drawing. 



The order and relation of the tribes is that followed by Hitch- 

 cock in his recent Genera of Grasses of the United States,* but 

 no attempt is made to invade the debatable ground of tribal 

 phylogeny. A selected bibliography, together with some ob- 

 servations on botanical nomenclature and the general principles 

 of taxonomy, closes the book. 



The volume forms one of the Rural Text-Book Series under the 

 general editorship of Dr. L. H. Bailey — a series in which the 

 grasses have already been treated in Hitchcock's Text-Book of 

 Grasses (1914), to which the present work will form an excellent 

 introduction. 



The drawings have been clearly and accurately made, and 

 have been carefully reproduced. The typography is clear and 

 attractive, and the proof-reading has been done with the most 

 scrupulous care. In fig. 50 on p. 57 the letters A. and B in the 

 legend have been inadvertently transposed. The book as a 

 whole is thoroughly sound in its pedagogy^, and will start the 

 beginner on a road from which it will never be necessary for 

 him to deviate, however far he may advance in his study of 

 agrostology'. — James C. Nelsox. 



* U. S. Dept. Agric. Bull. 772. 1920. 



