﻿Botany. 411 



which are high in hardness and density and not readily decom- 

 posed, and then to the softer foliated " phylloid " species, and 

 finally those which are non-crystalline and colloidal. For the details 

 reference must be made to the original paper. In regard to the 

 general result of such a classification it may be said that it for 

 the most part, as was to be expected, serves to bring species 

 together whose relationship has long been recognized, at the 

 same time there are notable exceptions, as when spodumene, 

 which was commonly grouped with the pyroxenes with which it 

 agrees in form, is separated and finds a place beside staurolite* 

 Other cases could be mentioned, but the relations brought out are 

 in any case suggestive and of value. 



It is not clear, however, that the chemical basis of the subdi- 

 vision of the silicates into the three groups mentioned is a neces- 

 sary consequence of the special principles laid down by Dr. Hunt. 



7. Flowers, Fruits, and Leaves; by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., 

 etc. — In the Nature Series of Macmillan & Co., 1886, the articles 

 which were first given as popular lectures and afterwards pub- 

 lished in Nature, have been collected into this small and very 

 readable volume. That is, to the former Lectures on Flowers — 

 which were published several years ago, at a time where Hermann 

 Muller's writings on the relations of common flowers to Insects 

 were not otherwise very accessible to English and American 

 readers— are now added two equally popular later lectures on 

 fruits and seeds, and on leaves. In all, the structures and forms are 

 especially considered in reference to their utilities, " opening out 

 a very wide and interesting field of study." As the author was 

 not bred to botany and is much given to a particular set of ideas, 

 he now and then runs some risks, but is generally trustworthy as 

 well as interesting in his favorite line of exposition. a. g. 



8. Lectures on the Physiology of Plants ; by Sydney Howard 

 Vines, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S., Fellow and Lecturer of Christ's 

 College, Cambridge, and Reader in Botany in the University. 

 Cambridge: University Press, 1886, pp. 710, 8vo. — This hand- 

 somely printed and stout volume presents a clear and well arranged 

 and well proportioned summary of vegetable physiology, as it has 

 become under the hands of its productive votaries within the last 

 dozen or so of years. For advanced students this book should ac- 

 company and supplement the physiological part of Professor 

 Goodale's Text Book, being naturally fuller in treatment, es- 

 pecially complete in bibliographical references, and entering with 

 much particularity into the discussion of certain rather theoretical 

 questions connected with cell-structure and reproduction. We 

 are thus provided with good abstracts of the present state of our 

 knowledge of the subject, in our own vernacular, and in a pre- 

 sentation which for lucidity and succinctness may not always be 

 found in the German sources or in translations from them. The 

 great advance in vegetable anatomy and physiology of late years 

 naturally is due to the special attention which has been given to 

 them by a numerous class of phytologists, especially on the Euro- 



