No. 386.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 167 
skin are dermal ossicles similar to but somewhat smaller than those 
of the extinct Mylodons. The only white person to see the animal 
alive was the traveler, the late Ramon Lista, who described it as 
about the same shape and size as the Indian pangolin. 
Professor Poteat has recently shown that Leidy’s genus Ourameeba 
is really Amceba plus mycelial hyphe. 
BOTANY. 
California Plants in their Homes.’ — This little book of Mrs. 
Davidson has more successfully brought together the choicest spirit 
of the ecology and physiology of plants than any other which has 
come the way of the writer of ‘this notice. Being made for children, 
it has from this very fact all the more to teach the adult devotee of 
the science. In some sixteen chapters we are introduced to many 
kinds of plants and come away with more than a bowing acquaint- 
ance. We are introduced to many of the innermost mysteries of 
their lives and learn their innocent and contriving ways of obtaining 
for themselves the coveted advantages over their neighbors. While 
the book is written so that it may be used as a reader, the “supple- 
ment for the use of teachers,” together with the style of the writing, 
make it one of the most possible of laboratory books for the younger 
student; in fact, the temptation to follow out the suggestions of the 
author to do this and to do that is so fascinating and so easy that it 
needs only the chance, supplied by the teacher, to be done. The book 
is, unfortunately, Californian only, but the lesson to teachers is as 
wide as the subject taught. Our text-books run now to physiology and 
ecology, but simply as classifications of physiological and ecological 
facts, from the consideration of which the poor student comes away 
knowing well that certain things are so, but with little notion of the 
reason why the teacher has been to such extraordinary pains to 
make him aware of it. But Mrs. Davidson is a teacher, —a teacher 
of teachers in fact, — and has realized the folly of thinking that we 
really get away from the evils of the old systematic teaching in 
botany by changing simply the subject-matter without changing the 
method and point of view. 
While confessedly an elementary book, this is to be compared 
1 Davidson, Alice Merritt. 4 Botanical Reader for Children. Los Angeles, 
B. R. Baumgardt & Co. 
