236 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
under circumstances of present knowledge, it is a satisfaction = 
most minds to entertain an cease even if that opinion be o 
theoretical nature, and be liable to future modification or alignoate 
disproof.” It is of the greatest assistance to teachers and students 
to have the advantage of an author’s review of his own more 
special researches ; by focussing the evidence SS from a 
variety of sources it is easier to form an opinion on the merits of 
the case before them. A summing up to be affective should be 
clear, well-arranged, ‘and concise, with as little repetition as 
to regard the Origin of ra in the light of a summary, 
ome extent it is inevitable that we should so regard it 
Taking for a moment narrow view, let us see how 
far the author has complied with what we venture to consider 
essentials in a judicial statement of evidence. The book is well- 
written, and with a freshness suggestive of keen enjoyment of a 
congenial task; the sae and arguments be lucidly stated, and 
the text is singular arly free from mistakes; the main contention is 
well servlets though at times obscured by the wealth of facts. 
Prof. Bow 
- hath among least thi: mei 
An undersense of greatest, sees the part 
As parts, but with a feeling of the whole: i 
But, we must add, the text consists of 727 pages! Asa general 
Seeon of a theory it lacks conciseness, and suffers from want 
of restraint. ‘To use too many circumstances ere we come to 
the matter is wearisome, and to use none at all is blunt”: the 
author’s thesis would have gained in force had he ——. with - 
Bacon’s aphorism in front of him. The reader may be compared 
to a traveller in a difficult country endeavouring to keep cone with 
a guide thoroughly familiar with his surroundings; he becomes 
fatigued and bewildered by the numerous cross-roads me wield 
paths, and on reaching his journey’s end his 
urred image of the route traversed. The sfarenebts of pate 
leading in other directions occasionally assert themselves, but the 
traveller is carried along by the insistence of his guide with a 
feeling that after all he may not be following the right road. A 
French botanist whose enthusiasm for fossil bacteria occasionally 
A note arity feature of the volume is the sosseastal treatment 
of. the importance of the records of the rocks in all questions con- 
cerned with problems of evolution the author has shown a breadth 
of view which is by no means common among botanists who sa0s 
not made a special study of extinct plants is con- 
importance he angen plants cannot ah oD to 
