324 BOTANICAL GAZETTE . [april 



Gager's text 2 is evidently intended, like Ganong's, as a guide for an 

 introductory, cultural course for college students, which shall at the same time 

 serve as a foundational one for students who are to pursue the subject further. 

 The arrangement of topics, however, differs in being professedly physiological, 

 at least in Part II, which corresponds most nearly to the body of GANONG's 

 book. Part I ("Introduction") deals with the organs of the cormophyte and 

 the structure of the cell. Part II ("The vegetative functions of plants'") 

 includes chapters on the loss of water, absorption of water, the path of liquids 

 in the plant, nutrition, fermentation, respiration, growth, and adjustment to 



surroundings. 



Chapter IV, under the title "Loss of water," which does not very ade- 

 quately forewarn the reader of the nature of its contents, discusses some of the 

 essential facts of the gross morphology, histology, and physiology of the leaf. 

 Chapter V ("Absorption of water") treats of the absorptive function of the 

 soil root, but other functions and the structure of the root, aside from that of 

 the root hairs, are not considered here, nor could anything but the briefest 

 mention of them be found elsewhere in the book. Certain important features 

 of the structure and activity of the stem also are either not referred to at all, 

 or are barely mentioned. Thus, such tissues as bark, phellogen, cork, sieve 

 tubes, etc., are not mentioned in the index, or more than incidentally referred 

 to in the text. Secondary thickening, types of branching, the various habits 

 assumed by the stem, the structure of buds, etc., are not given space for any 

 real discussion or explanation. These omissions are apparently part of the 

 plan of the book and are interesting as showing the author's estimate of the 

 relative importance of these topics among the large number from which 

 selection must be made. 



The 26 chapters of Part III ("Structure and life histories") include dis- 

 cussions of the life histories of a considerable number of types, especially of the 

 mosses, ferns, and flowering plants. The fern is made the primary type in 

 these discussions of life cycles, and the whole series is rather copiously illus- 

 trated. Important and interestingly written chapters in this part are those 

 dealing with the problem of sex in plants, the economic importance of fungi, 

 • evolution, Darwinism, experimental evolution, heredity, and paleobotany. 

 The treatment of these themes, with the series of accompanying portraits of 

 some of the great naturalists, serves to suggest something of the history of 

 certain important botanical theories. 



The book is abundantly illustrated with 434 figures, a good share of which 

 are original drawings or halftones. While the appearance, for example, of such 

 illustrations as figs. 127, 198, 263, and 286 is to be welcomed, the same cannot 

 justly be said of some others. The use of such illustrations as figs. 37, i4 2 > 

 151, 160, 165, or 180 would seem scarcely justified on grounds of mere novelty, 



2 Gager, C. Stuart, Fundamentals of botany. 8vo. pp. xvi+640. Phila- 

 delphia: Blakiston's Sons. 19 16. 





