ELEMENTARY TEXT-BOOK of BOTANY, Etc. 219 
One is fempted to ask—Is it Botany? It is certainly not elementary 
otany, as taught in Prof. Oliver’s Lessons, and it has little or no 
ciate = the Botany of the working naturalist. If the old dry 
and zepelent class- book of, say, forty years ago were an abuse of 
Bota: f the abuse than of Sete in their 
com Bousen: and the latter abuse is ae the ‘‘type system.” The 
author of the little book on the Diseases of Crops (noticed at p. 187) 
quotes the saying of ‘the celebrated Rousseau,” that one can be a 
‘very great botanist without knowing the name of a nneie hes = 
stem ” 
s Ai cts has made an effort to supply a book _ while 
feos to the type system, should wisely begin with t e familiar 
forms of flowering plants. These are dealt with in ra 1. Ther 
is then a jump to Protococcus, and a gradual ascent to the faWering 
plant again, which is reached in Part III., where its minute struc. 
ture and physiology are discussed. There is a sort of reason for 
this arrangement, but niet it would have been better to have kept 
a steadily descending co Miss Aitken has done her Aepcie with 
much ability, and her book will undoubtedly be usefi wn 
ands and in those of careful and thou ghtful hanhers: but it is 
waste and middle of the ake ” There area 
dakar if niin errors. 
It is hard © understand how Botany is to be learnt from Mr. 
Johnstone’s Manual. On the first page, among the answers to 
liv 2 
‘*What is Life?’ the beginner is told that living s 
of etabolic power.’’ His is like living protoplasm— 
‘‘an incomprehensible mixture” page). There. are many 
ble s )s 
good woodcuts igapte | borrowed), and text more or less about 
them, n a sort of type system, prefaced by an introduction 
on Structural Botany. The hardened botanist sometimes has his 
OT he aa te style. It is a book for the compulsory studen 
— take his pleasure sadly who toys with this handmaid 
