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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 

 An Introduction to Structural Botany (Flowering Plants). By D. H. 



Scott, M.A., &c. London : Adam & Charles Black. 1894. 



Pp. xii, 288 ; 113 figs. Price 5s. 

 Practical Botany for Beginners. By F. 0. Bowek, F.R.S. London : 



Macmillan & Co. 1894. Pp. xi, 275 ; 13 figs. Price 4s. 6d. 



nothing more^han the want of a book which shomd^ dcf foTstrutf 

 tural Botany what Prof. Oliver's Lessons lias long done for the study 

 of the principal natural orders. It seems hard to realise that this 

 grievance is no more, and that we possess in Dr. Scott's volume such a 

 book in our own language, and a book that no honest critic will fail to 

 assess at a higher value than any known book in any language that 

 has the same scope and aim. It has the same excellences as Prof. 

 Oliver's book, and these have been harder of attainment here because 

 the difficulties of making things perfectly plain are greater, since the 

 minuteness of the objects renders ordinary comparisons and verbal 

 illustrations remote. Nothing could well be more plain and simple, 

 or more severely accurate or better judged from beginning to end. 

 The plans of those writers who have hitherto tried to produce an 

 elementary guide to this department of the subject have always 

 been laid with the intention of boiling down some larger Manual, 

 and the result has been a kind of pemmican suited more to the 

 needs of the " crammer " than of the student. In the present case 

 the author has plainly gone to work afresh, and he has produced a 

 book based on his own knowledge, and written clearly expressing 

 his own thoughts and ideas, instead of the second-hand notions 

 derived from other writers. He has taken three types ; the Wall- 

 flower for Dicotyledons, the White Lily for Monocotyledons, and 

 the Spruce Fir for Oymnosperms ; and dealing exhaustively with 

 them, and adducing facts from other plants, has taught his subject 

 in these pages most thoroughly. After dealing with the external 

 characters of the Wallflower, he takes up the internal structure, and 

 the development of its reproductive organs. He then treats the 

 Lily in like fashion, and subsequently gives a chapter on the physi- 

 ology of nutrition. Finally the Spruce Fir is dealt with as the 

 two other types. It is difficult to select any part for its special 

 excellence, but in reading the book the account of the reproductive 

 organs appeared to be particularly good — probably because this has 

 always been so unsatisfactorily done in other primary books. 

 Otherwise the book is of level merit in all its parts. 



The elementary student has only one want to be satisfied—a 

 similar book on well-selected cryptogamic types; and since this 

 volume has " Flowering Plants " in a secondary place in its title, it 

 is to be earnestly hoped that another volume is in contemplation or 

 preparation that will supply this want. This notice would be in- 

 complete without praise of the admirable new illustrations. 



It is not too much to say that Prof. Bower's Practical Botany 

 has had an unrivalled influence in its department on the teaching 



