246 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
volume would be necessary, yet when Dr. Rendle does give the uses 
of Palmacee in full, one is led to expect more than-is allowed in the 
ease of other natural orders. 
The abstracts given of controversial questions, such as the cone- 
seale of Conifere, the grass-cotyledon, and the fertilization, embryo- 
logy, and parthenogenesis of angiosperms, have been prepared with 
which so much is almost daily appearing. These questions are of 
ret interest at present, and this account of them is exceedingly 
useful. 
The preceding remarks will be sufficient to show the value and 
general usefulness of Dr. Rendle’s work, but there are certain 
points in which it lends itself to criticism. The figures are de- 
cidedly disappointing. In many cases they are so reduced in size 
obscure and even deceptive. That of Arrhenatherum avena- 
ceum (Fig. 107) “from Ward, after Kent,” almost amounts to a 
libel on the exquisite plate in the Natural History of Plants, and in 
too many cases the figures seem to have been taken from almost 
yollen-grain, which would greatly simplify the account given here. 
3 this respect Dr. Rendle seems to have followed too closely Dr. 
Engler and the Berlin school. In some places also the treatment 
is unequal; the inflorescence, distribution of fruit and seed, 
classification of fruits, and some other parts of Chapter IV. are 
scarcely up to the standard of the rest of the ook. The ter 
north temperate zone and in mountains had been pointed out. So 
distribution of many Liliaceae. 
There are, of course, many points in which one is inclined to 
differ from the author. The wide distribution of Narthecium and 
Tofieldia, for instance, is surely only a special example of the wide 
distribution of almost all marsh plants. The fact that Hriocaulon 
septangulare occurs in Skye and the West of Ireland, and that Naias 
flexilis and Sisyrinchium angustifolium are also found in Europe, does 
