57 



No class of students are more in need of such a survey and ac- 

 quaintance than are those in our agricultural schools and colleges. 

 It may not be essential to being a farmer, but the aim should not 

 be to make the graduates of our agricultural colleges merely 

 farmers, nor merely good farmers. 



The reviewer has made running notes as follows: 



On page 9 protoplasm is described as "a very complex chem- 

 ical substance," but the tabular analysis of a unit of protoplasm 

 on the opposite page gives the more nearly correct impression of 

 protoplasm as a complex physical system, comprising many 

 chemical compounds. 



Chapter IV, Stems, seems specially clear and satisfactory. 



The statement (p. 46) that "carbohydrates are made . . . 

 only by those cells of green plants that possess chlorophyll" 

 should be qualified. All cells make cellulose, and many classes 

 of non-chlorophyll-bearing cells manufacture sugar from starch. 

 The non-green cells of the potato tuber (one example of thou- 

 sands) normally make starch. The author doubtless refers to 

 the primary elaboration of carbohydrates out of inorganic ele- 

 ments, but freshmen have not yet become such carping critics as 

 reviewers, and might be misled by the statement as it stands. 



The pollen tube does not always enter through the micropyle, 

 even in cultivated plants (p. 52). The sperm nucleus does not 

 contain paternal "characters," nor does the egg-nucleus contain 

 maternal "characters," but only the determiners or genes of 

 those characters (p. 52). The use of the term "embryo nucleus" 

 for oosperm (oospore, zygote) (p. 53) is unusual if not unique, 

 and not accurate nor adequate. The use of the term 

 " Pteridophytes " to include Calamophytes and Lepidophytes 

 (pp. 62 and 64) is archaic, or rapidly becoming so. Zea Mays 

 is correct, not Zea mays (p. 178). 



Yellow sweet clover is not Melilotus alba (legend of Fig. 183, 

 p. 435)- This is obviously an oversight, for the author is else- 

 where correct on this point. 



The bibliographies at the end of each chapter will prove very 

 helpful, and contain many citations to literature as late as 191 7. 



The book is a mine of information hitherto available only in 



