504 Canadian Record of Science. 
Book NotTIcgEs. 
Tpxt-Boox or Borany.'—This most recent of American Text- 
Books of Botany is dedicated to the illustrious memory of Antoine 
L. De Jussieu, upon whose inductive method the course of study is 
based. The first part deals with instructural and systematic botany, 
touching briefly upon some of the more important physiological 
processes. Part II., Phytology, opens with a pretty full list of . 
abbreviations used, a most useful list of etymons, and a very full 
list of proper names. The remainder of the work—169 pages—is 
taken up by a “ Manual of Plants, including all the known orders 
with their representative genera.” 
There is little evidence of advance beyond what has been stated 
in previous text-books. We note, however, as announced in the 
preface, that the sequence of the leading divisions of the Phanero- 
gams—Class I. Gymnosperms and Class II. Augiosperms—is more 
in accord with present views than what is usually found in our 
unrevised text-books. The figures are good, and for the most part 
fresh—a few being original. 
The treatment is clear and concise, but in the use of similes is 
often inclined to be trivial—a style quite out of place in a scientific 
treatise. The attempt to cover too much ground within a very 
limited space has resulted—as must be expected under such cir- 
cumstances—in a breviety of statement which must often leave the 
student without any clear conception of the particular subject. So 
far as the systematic and structural portion is concerned, this diffi- 
culty would be overcome by a competent teacher, but for the stu- 
dent under the ordinary circumstances of academic instruction 
the fault is a serious one. It becomes more marked in the Manual, 
where brevity and condensation is carried to such an extreme as 
to render this part of the work of little or no value for the deter- 
mination of species by those who have not already gained a con- 
siderable experience in the analysis of plants. 
When a new work such as this appears, one naturally looks to it 
as giving recognized facts of fairly recent date, and it is disappoint- 
ing to find, page 46, that the leaves of Welwitschia are spoken of 
as persistent cotyledons; page 70, and in the chart, page 69, the 
term Azoic is retained instead of Eozoic, while the statement is 
made, notwithstanding the known presence of Hozoon Canadense 
and graphite in the Laurentian formation, that no life appeared 
until the Paleozoic ; the cells of Diatoms are rich in starch, p. 25 ; 
1Botany for Academies and Colleges, with a Manual of Plants. 
By Annie Chambers-Ketchum, A.M. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1889. 
8yo, pp. 190 and 169. 
