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classification of plants is brought together on pages 19 to 147, 
which read much like the old Structural Botany of Gray, which 
many botanists will still remember from their youth. It includes 
the external morphology and terminology of the flower, the fruit, 
the inflorescence, and the various vegetative organs. If these struc- 
tures and organs are the sole basis of classification, then sys- 
tematic botany becomes an ‘elementary subject, adapted to fresh- 
men, while the experience of the reviewer is that it is an advanced 
subject which requires considerable previous botanical training for 
its appreciation. Identification of plants and recognition of fami- 
lies or species are the elementary parts of the science and may be 
learned in high school, while an understanding of the whys and 
wherefores of classification demand much more preparation. One 
finds in this book nothing about the discoveries in paleobotany 
which throw light on modern classification, nothing about the 
general nature. of evolution, nothing about the contribution of 
plant anatomy to an understanding of plant relationships. 
This is not derogatory to the inclusion of so much text on 
gross morphology. That subject is now seldom or poorly taught 
in secondary schools and usually neglected completely in college; 
it must be presented somewhere to the student in taxonomy. 
Armed with such information a student can identify a plant and 
can understand the great number of terms used in describing it 
But he can not appreciate classification unless the rudiments, at 
least, of all the diverse body of botanical knowledge used in de- 
veloping our modern classification are known to him. He may 
Properly acquire such information in other courses, but its ap- 
plication to taxonomy should be presented in the taxonomy course 
itself. That the author is fully aware of this situation may be 
seen at once from his statements on page 17. 
Chapter II presents in five pages all that the author considers 
necessary on such important subjects as nomenclature, the com 
cept of the genus and species, and phylogeny, and Chapter I m 
eleven pages sketches the historical development of classification. 
Both of these chapters might be considerably extended with bene- 
fit to the student. 
Lastly, we come to the introduction, which goes far toward 
explaining the general motive of the author. Laboratory drawing 
€ says, is generally vastly overdone in college work. We agre® 
with him. The field-trip should be a dignified part of the course 
