452 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXII. 
Living Plants and their Properties.'— These essays were read, 
on various occasions within the last few years, to audiences as diverse 
as the Linnean Society of London and “ The Parlor Club, an organi- 
zation devoted to literary and scientific culture, Lafayette, Indiana,” 
or else were published in magazines, bulletins of agricultural experi- 
ment stations, etc. 
The preface expresses the hope that this volume will arouse a 
more general interest in the phases of botany treated. The reviewer 
fears that the general reader will be discouraged by two qualities 
common to the majority of the essays. First, the number of unde- 
fined technical terms, familiar enough to botanists, but rather appall- 
ing to others, and of Latin generic names, unaccompanied by any 
suggestion as to the family of the plants spoken of, is unfortunately 
arge. Second, the absence of definite conclusions concisely summed 
up at the end of discussions. 
If so much adverse criticism may be brought against the book, 
much may, on the other hand, be said in its favor. The authors are 
professional botanists, know what they are talking about, and have 
the faculty of saying things attractively. More than this, in treat- 
ing physiological subjects and problems, they consistently indicate 
the fundamental identity of the functions of animals and plants, and 
show that this is due to their having the same living substance as 
the physical basis of their existence. The elucidation and the under- 
standing of any function of a plant is greatly facilitated by a com- 
parison with the much more familiar expression of the same function 
in man or in some other animal ; but it does not necessarily follow, 
as is well stated in the essay on the special senses of plants, that all 
the advantage is on one side. When animal and plant physiologists 
realize that they have common problems which they can best wor 
out together, they will be as helpful to each other as the animal and 
plant cytologists have been and still are; and together they will be 
more effective in advancing knowledge than when the one cleaves 
only to muscles and the other to roots. GEORGE J. PEIRCE. 
A New Botanical Journal. — The following preliminary announce- 
ment of a new periodical has just been received : 
The New England Botanical Club is considering the publication of a 
monthly journal, to begin January 1, 1899. It is to be an octavo of about 
1 Living Plants and their Properties. A collection of essays by Joseph Charles 
` Arthur, Sc.D., and Daniel Trembly MacDougal, Ph.D. New York, Baker and 
Taylor, 8vo, 242 pp., 30 pls., and figures. 
