THE ORIGIN OF A LAND FLORA 235 
book needs much revision and amplification before it can be 
roe as a résumé of all that is known regarding the Cotton 
Sta 
i. Ws. 
The Origin of a ere Flora: a Theory based upon the Facts of 
Alternation. By F. O. Bower, Se.D., F.R.S., Regius Pro- 
fessor of Pokies in the University of Glasgow, 8vo, cloth, 
p. xi emillan 
Price 18s. 
Tue title of Prof. Bower's Baad conveys the impression of a 
treatise at once interesting to the expert and intelligible to the 
ayman whose San rae of botany is not based upon modern 
laboratory teaching. It suggests speculations, the slender founda- 
tions oe rite Hes forgotten in the fascination attending a search 
the Facts of ikserintion.” “iat shock and makes consider- 
able demands upon the in pera oft a reader unfamiliar with 
modern botanical slang, if one may use the expression. In turn- 
ing to the last sentence of the concluding chapter in the hope of ~ 
ands something cre he reads :—“ But whatever the modern 
complications may mparison along lines which have been 
pursued in this volume fedinnten that the sporophyte, which is oo 
essential feature in the Flora of the Land, is referable back | 
rigin to pos L 
as a phase interpolated between the events of aliesnbentke doubling 
and chromosome-reduction in the priewibite life-cycle of plants of 
aquatic habit.” 
e book before us is not for the amateur, nor can it be said to 
fhienish food easy of digestion Ae the earnest inet of botany. 
Botanists are familiar with Prof. Bower's views as expressed in a 
paper published in the Annals of Botany i in 1890 ona “Biological 
Theory of Antithetic Alternation,” and in the series of m 
entitled ‘Studies in the Morphology of Spore-producing "hate 
bers.” His contention is that the spore-bearing emp (the 
gra 
divisi es n of labour, mn the tissues formed from the 
branch of botany. Whatever may be the vendins of Fikes genera- 
the gros: or otherwise of his views which can be expected— 
there can be no difference of opinion as to the value of the 
investigations We cordially agree with the author when he 
writes :—‘* But even where problems are apparently insoluble 
