74 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [july 



including the whole range of the groups, and the 189 of part II, which com- 

 prised all of physiology. So gross a relative disproportion between bulk and 

 intrinsic content value, while unjustifiable from the textbook point of view 

 and prohibitive of the acquisition by a student of any such clear-cut and well 

 proportioned view of its subject as parts I and II afford, is perhaps allowable 

 on the ground of the genuine need for a first formulation of the material. 

 In the third place, the book displays the same wealth of well selected illus- 

 tration, and the same tasteful, even beautiful typography of the earlier parts. 

 And finally, so far as the accuracy of the fact-matter is concerned, it will 

 require a vastly larger knowledge of the material than the present reviewer 

 possesses to detect any considerable error either of statement or omission, 

 while such flaws as appear are too insignificant for mention. It is, in brief, 

 a distinctive, authoritative, foundational work, destined to take an immediate 

 place as an indispenable reference work for all concerned with the life- 

 phenomena of plants. 



A remarkable feature of the book consists in its philosophy. This may 

 be summarized as a systematic antagonism to everything Darwinian. Under 

 the assumption that the language commonly in use to describe the relations of 

 plants to their surroundings, including such words as adaptation, adjustment, 

 storage, etc. (p. 487), mislead learners into a belief that plants act with an 

 even more than human forethoughtfulness (p. 950), the author attempts to 

 avoid all such expressions, visiting with especial condemnation anything of 

 teleological implication. But only a bogey of his 

 bottom of the author's trouble. No students, in the reviewer's experience, 

 if only half-decently instructed, ever gather any such notions. Besides, 

 Darwin himself, as to whose views, of course, there is difference of opinion, 

 but as to whose rationalistic habit of mind there is none, habitually uses 

 teleological language throughout his works without ever having been mis- 

 understood in this respect. However, Professor Cowles is apparently not 

 an evolutionist, because, after expressly and repeatedly combating the idea 

 of a historical or causative adaptation, which he makes either an accident or 

 a psychological illusion, he replaces it by the idea of "mechanical causation" 

 (P- 487) f that is, passive reaction to mechanical, physical, or chemical influences. 

 Now this idea carries the inevitable corollary that such responses must be 

 always the same in the same part under the same conditions, and that there- 

 fore they cannot be modified into anything else, any more than chemical 

 compounds can change the nature of their reactions to outside influences; 

 and without such possibility of change, no evolution, but only a kind of spon- 

 taneous creation, is possible. In his opposition to everything savoring of 

 adaptation, the author is led at times even to a distorted representation of 

 the views he opposes. Thus, no authors, that the reviewer can recall, and 

 certainly none of authoritative rank, have ever maintained any such naive 



own 



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tion, at the top of p. 950. 



rything 



