No.403.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 607 
scopic structure of drugs. Another feature of pharmacognostical 
interest is an appendix of about ten pages, giving a brief synopsis of 
the officinal plant drugs of the German Pharmacopcia. 
The subjects usually treated in books of this class are here pre- 
sented in a clear, concise text, which is very effectively supplemented 
by the excellent woodcuts. 
It is hardly necessary to point out the good qualities of a book 
that has proved its usefulness by long service. It is enough to say 
that it is distinctly improved in the new edition and will remain one 
of the most serviceable of the shorter botanical text-books. 
Het. 
* Lessons in Botany.” !—The increased attention to botany in 
high-school courses during the last few years has resulted in a rich 
crop of elementary texts designed to meet the new conditions. In the 
preparation of many of these texts it has been assumed that a full 
year's time could be given to this subject. Very many schools, how- 
ever, are not yet able to devote more than a half year to the study of 
plants, and abridged editions are consequently beginning to appear. 
Atkinson's Zessozs, a volume of three hundred and sixty-five pages, 
is such a work. The opening chapter on germination, winter buds 
and shoots, is succeeded by the study of protoplasm and its proper- 
ties, as observed in root hairs, Spirogyra, and Mucor. About eighty- 
six pages are given to a study of the physiology of flowering plants. 
Part II, dealing with the morphology and life history of represent- 
ative types, begins with Spirogyra and Vaucheria, following the 
usual sequence up through the ascending series of forms. When 
the study of the angiosperms is taken up a chapter on seeds and 
seedlings i is introduced. Here the types discussed differ from those 
in the opening chapter 
Part II is concluded by Studies on Plant Families. Twenty or 
more lessons are devoted to the morphology and ecology of about as 
many plants. Part III, including about sixty pages, is given up to 
ecology. So far as the ecological adaptations of the individual plant 
under ordinary conditions is concerned, this phase of botany seems 
admirably adapted for use in the high school; but when the study 
of plant communities introduces zones of tension and other landscape 
features the value of the subject in a half year's high-school course 
is doubtful. Descriptions of swamps near Ithaca can hardly take 
! Atkinson, George Francis. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1900. 365 pp. 
277 figs. 
