65 



Chapter 4 contains three pages on forestry, and Chapter 7 

 several pages on MendeHsm and plant breeding and fourteen 

 pages on the ecology of the flower. Chapter 9, devoted espe- 

 cially to ecology, is about twice as long as the corresponding one 

 in "Botany all the year round," and contains several pages on 

 zonation and other phytogeographical problems, which were 

 not included in the earlier book. Dissemination is treated in 

 Chapter i. Chapter 10 closes with four pages on evolution, and 

 systematic botany is treated very briefly in an appendix, about 

 the same as in the other book. 



The practical questions and suggestions for field work, which 

 were such a valuable feature of the first book, are here repeated, 

 with some changes and additions. They are very well chosen, 

 and most of them require the student to do some thinking, instead 

 of merely turning back a few pages to find the answers. The 

 literary style is simple without being tedious, and there are only 

 enough technicalities to obviate undue circumlocution. 



This book, like many other modern botanical texts, illustrates 

 strikingly the recent decline in popularity of systematic botany. 

 A generation ago most American "botanies" consisted chiefly of 

 rather dry definitions of a multitude of forms of plant organs, 

 after mastering which the student was able to use keys for the 

 identification of species. Directions for the preparation of her- 

 barium specimens were often added, and the more advanced 

 books discussed the principles of classification and nomenclature. 

 Nowadays histology, physiology, ecology, genetics, etc., have 

 almost crowded taxonomy out of the curriculum. Some of the 

 latest and most pretentious botanical text-books indeed describe 

 the morphological features of many of the larger plant families 

 and speculate on their phylogeny, but give no idea of what con- 

 stitutes a species or how plants are named, and offer the student 

 no instructions as to how to identify an unfamiliar plant if he 

 should perchance wander far enough afield to meet one. 



As Prof. Bessey has recently pointed out,* the modern sort of 

 botany gives a student nothing to occupy his mind with during 



♦Science II. 33: 635. April 28, 1911, Mr. Seaver's article in Torreya for 

 November, 191 2, should also be read in this connection. 



