428 Scientific Intelligence. 
Sherardian Professor of Botany in the University of Oxford.— 
This work, published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in a large- 
paged octavo volume of 515 pages, is a ereat improvement upon 
the original of Sachs, not to speak of the “advantage of having an 
independent volume apart from physiology and histology. Evi- 
dently the translator and reviser have done their part well. 
Perhaps it is too late to arrest such a misbegotten word as 
asexual meaning non-sexual; but Oxford University and the 
Clarendon Press might have lent a helping hand. The author 
himself, as appears from his introduction, was of doubtful mind as 
to the character, number and names of his primary group in the 
Vegetable Kingdom ; so that his English representatives could 
not expect to help ‘him. But he comes out essentially in a 
good old way with Thallophytes, Bryophytes, Pteriophytes or 
Vascular Cryptogams and Seed Plants (Spermaphytes). This, 
developed, recognizes a primary division into Phanerogams or 
Flowering and Cryptogams or Flowerless Plants; as to names, 
Flowering Plants is quite as good as Seed Plants, and long in 
use, and Spermaphytes is not such a name as the classical End- 
licher would have made. 
Coming to the classification of the Phanerogams, they are 
distributed, first into those without an ovary, Gymnosperme, 
the third group of which, Gnetacee is said to have “ flowers 
in many respects like those of Angiosperms,” which is true 
and pertinent; second, Phanerogams with ovaries, Angiospermae, 
A. Monocotyledons, B. Dicotyledons. Thus the Gymnosperms 
are taken to be what they are, whatever they may have come 
from, part and parcel of Phanerogamous plants; and, if the 
Gnetacece be of them, strictly connected with the Dicotyledons. 
Finally, names and terms have some rights which ought to be 
respected. So we may protest against the present but probably 
fleeting fancy of imposing cryptogamous terminology upon 
phanerogamous botany, the new and ill-defined upon the old and 
well-settled. If all homologues must needs have the same name, 
why not call microspores “pollen,” rather than pollen grains 
“spores?” This translation reads remarkably well; for the Ger- 
man has really been turned into English. It is not the transla- 
tor’s fault that we read that in the Cycads, “the branching of 
the primary root is monopodial,” which is one way of saying 
that the branching is no branching at all. A plain writer would 
simply say such roots do not branch. A. G. 
III. Astronomy. 
1. The Astronomical Journal.—Eleven numbers of Dr. Gould’s 
Journal have appeared since its resumption last autumn. It main- 
tains the high character of the earlier volumes. 
2. Comets in 1886.—In the tenth number of the Astr. Jour., 
is given the following table: 
