Botany. 585 



figures with which the book is illustrated should enable the 

 student having some acquaintance with the methods of mechan- 

 ical drawing to acquire considerable facility in the construction 

 of such figures by following out the examples given. The 

 methods, so frequently used to-day, of drawing crystal figures 

 from the gnomonic or stereographic projections, are not dis- 

 cussed, w. E. F. 



III. Botany. 



1. Systematic Anatomy of the Dicotyledons, A Handbook 

 for Laboratories of pare and applied Botany / by Dr. Hans 

 Solereder, Professor of Botany in the University of Erlangen. 

 Two volumes, Oxford, 1908. (The Clarendon Press.)— The 

 translation has been carefully done by Messrs. L. A. Boodle and 

 F. E. Fritsch, and revised by Dr. D. H. Scott. The text of the 

 German edition is not easy to translate into smooth English, but 

 the translators and editor, between them, have accomplished this 

 in a remarkable manner. They have also cleared up some obscuri- 

 ties in the original, and have made the whole treatise entirely 

 available to the English-speaking student. 



Even before achromatic lenses began to reveal with certainty 

 the forms of plant tissues and their constituents, numerous investi- 

 gators had carried on researches in this field and had begun to 

 encumber the science of microscopic anatomy with useless terms. 

 And, when the improved lenses unfolded surprises in every direc- 

 tion, the framework of plants was subjected by zealous students 

 to a renewed and very thorough examination. The works which 

 preceded the studies based on development were accurate and 

 important, but they were excessively confusing, owing to a dis- 

 regard of any convention as to terminology. The same term was 

 often applied by different authors in different ways and differ- 

 ent terms were not unfrequently applied to the same object. 

 Again, there were some purists who insisted upon making the 

 most absurd and minute distinctions and who revelled in compli- 

 cated systems of tissues. For instance, it was not unusual to 

 describe the innumerable variants in ordinary parenchyma, giving 

 to each element a special name. After the scientific investigation 

 of tissue development was fairly under way, certain new terms 

 were introduced, but there was at the same time a disposition to 

 clear away many of the old terms and much of the rubbish which 

 had been so long accumulating. With the appearance of deBary's 

 Comparative Anatomy a still further step was taken towards 

 coordination, and from that time there has been a well-established 

 consensus as to the use of technical terms. 



From the foregoing can be gathered some idea of the enormous 

 difficulty of the task undertaken by Solereder. It was nothing 

 less than to sort out from the mass of heterogeneous material 

 which had been so long in disordered heaps, the essential charac- 



Am. Jour. Sci. — Fourth Series, Vol. XXVI, No. 156. — December, 1908. 

 41 



