BOOK REVIEW 
Johnson’s Taxonomy of Flowering Plants 
No matter what may be said to the contrary, a knowledge of 
the names of plants and of their proper place in classification re- 
mains a basic essential of botanical knowledge and botanical re- 
search. The few who might deny this fail to realize that their 
own use of names permeates all their botanical study and that 
they rely on the work of others in this line even though they do 
not contribute to it themselves. Of late years, actual instruction 
in systematic botany in America has been considerably reduced, 
until there has become a pretty well developed appreciation of the 
deficiency and a desire often expressed for more and better teach- 
ing of the subject. One hindrance to this has been the lack of a 
Suitable textbook, another the lack of experienced teachers. We can 
not expect a teacher without experience in systematics to be the 
best teacher of the subject, nor to teach it at all without a text- 
book to serve as a guide, while a person who has a personal 
knowledge of the subject can teach it without a text. Experience 
with plant classification usually begins with acquiring a knowledge 
of the local flora, and our modern Ph.D. mills neglect that phase 
of education to a lamentable extent. So the desire to extend the 
knowledge of systematic botany through the younger generation 
has largely failed for lack of suitable teachers and suitable texts. 
In the past three years three textbooks of systematic botany 
have appeared in this country, and it is with the latest of these 
at we are now concerned. 
Dr. Johnson brought to his task of preparing this large volume 
the experiences gleaned through several years of teaching the 
subject. During this time he learned to distinguish between one 
body of facts which are of direct use to the student in acquiring 
a general knowledge of the subject and another body which repre- 
sents the end to be attained. The first includes the principles on 
which classification is based, the preliminary information, mostly 
morphological, necessary to its comprehension, and the methods 
by which a plant may be placed in its proper category in the gen- 
eral scheme. The second includes the morphological characteristics 
_ Johnson, Avtar Monrad. Taxonomy of the flowering plants. pP- 
ita, er 478 figures. The Century Company: New York and London, 
77 
