284 HANDBUCH FUR PFLANZENSAMMLEK. 



Handbuchfiir Pflanzensammler. Von Dr. Udo Dammeb. 8vo, pp. x. 



342, 59 cuts, 13 plates. Stuttgart, 1891. 



This present little work was undertaken to teach the plant-lover, 

 in the widest sense of the word, how to arrange his collections. 

 The author hopes especially to be of use to the teacher in helping 

 him to make plant-life and its relations comprehensible to his 

 pupils. The plant-lover who spends his leisure in the open air will 

 find guidance, and those to whom it is given to visit foreign lands 

 will learn how and what to collect. A great deal of valuable 

 information has certainly been got into the comparatively small 

 space which the book occupies, and Dr. Dammer is careful to 

 consider different tastes and divide his matter accordingly. 



The first few chapters deal with the collector's equipment, and 

 the collection and preparation of specimens. The statement on 

 page 3 that the Linnean Herbarium is in the rooms of the British 

 Museum is a pardonable error, and does not detract from the value 

 of the many hints and suggestions, which include recipes for drying 

 succulent plants and flowers, for the preparation of Conifers with 

 deciduous needles, and the preservation of dehiscent fruits in 

 glycerine. To assist in the determination of the flowering plants, a 

 general review is given of Hooker and Bentham's cohorts, and an 

 explanation of the parts of the flower, the inflorescence, and leaf- 

 arrangement illustrative of their importance to this end. The 

 mounting of the specimens and their arrangement in the herbarium 

 occupies the seventh chapter, and the remaining ten are devoted to 

 the various tastes hi collecting : first the biological collection, 



comprising the relations of plants to their surroundings, whether 

 atmospheric conditions, the animal world, or other plants ; then a 

 few hints for a pathological collection, followed by the teratological 

 series, in which Dr. Masters's well-known book is largely referred 

 to. The "fruit and seed collection" contains further information 

 as to the preservation of fruits, several methods being described. 

 The preparation of woods, and especially of sections, for microscopic 

 examination is the chief point in the few pages on the wood 

 collection. After a short chapter on buds, the leaf collection is 

 considered at greater length, and various points of biological interest 

 worthy of illustration suggested. The fern collection begins with 

 an explanation of the microscope, and how to work it ; this is 

 followed by a brief account of the life-history of the group, and a 

 capital description of the venation, sporangia, and sori, which are 

 of importance in the discrimination of the orders and genera. A 

 brief account of the orders is also given. This chapter contains 

 some excellent figures borrowed from Luerssen, as do also the 

 succeeding two, in which the Mosses and Thallophytes are treated 

 on a similar plan, but somewhat exhaustively for the size of the 

 book. Some preparation-methods which are not included in the 

 body of the work are brought together towards the end ; they deal 

 chiefly with Fungi and their snores. 



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ith a classified list of Flor 



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