186 



THE OAK. 



a threat of impending danger to the work of the honourable 

 and truth-loving pioneers of evolution — at all events to the credit 

 of work at this absorbing subject. However, these remarks are 

 apropos des bottes, and we must return to less exciting criticism of 

 Mr. Massee's monograph. 



It may at once be said that Mr. Massee is too practised a hand 

 at work of this kind, and too well acquainted with its methods, to 

 produce any work with crying errors of method, with other than a 

 seemly arrangement of its parts. His descriptions are "by the 

 card," and his figures are clever examples of draughtsmanship 



and colouring 



all that might be 



expected from a toiler in the field of these "critical" organisms, as 

 one may be permitted to call them. There is, however, — and this 

 may be a fault incident to the state of knowledge, — a want of 

 finality in the treatment of the species. Finality of course is 

 not the word, — that there cannot be, — and one hesitates to say 

 "up to date." In any case there is accomplished the great work 

 of assembling the forms in order — the order of their description, 

 even if it be not the order of their review. There were immense 

 difficulties to be met and faced, greater obstacles to be overcome, 

 and it is in no spirit of censure that we say Mr. Massee has not 

 reached an ideal in the great work of passing in review the 

 Mycetozoa — the most obscure group in, or allied to, the vegetable 

 kingdom, with the possible exception of the Bchizomycetes. 



There is one somewhat delicate matter of which it may not be 

 imprudent to take note. There is rather prominent quotation of 

 notes and remarks made on certain specimens by Mr. Lister, who is 

 engaged on a monograph of this group. I freely recognise Mr. 

 Massee's right to quote such remarks, and even to criticise them, 

 but probably it would have been better, having regard to the fact 

 of coming publication by Mr. Lister, to have more briefly referred 

 to these MS. notes, which were, one would say, not apparently 

 written for publication in that form, and were certainly intended as 

 mere herbarium notes of work, of such kind as might be helpful to 

 herbarium officers in the matter of sorting of specimens. Without 

 doubting, it may be repeated, Mr. Massee's clear right to make 

 these quotations, it may yet be thought a subject for regret that he 

 decided on this course. Probably this view has only to be pointed 

 to him to gain his acquiescence in it. It is not brought forward 

 here in other than the most friendly spirit, and by no means cited 

 as a serious blemish on a work which must have cost its author 

 much assiduous labour and creditable investigation. It is published 



very 



Mycetozoa, be he botanist, zoologist, or hybrid (biologist). 



G. M. 



The Oak: A Popular Introduction to Forest Botany. By H. 



Marshall Ward, M.A., F.R.S. Kegan Paul, Trench, 

 Trubner & Co. 8vo, pp. 171. Price 2s. 6d. 



The Oak is the subject of the third number of the Modern 



Science series, edited by Sir John Lubbock. Though entitled " a 



