1082 The American Naturalist. [November, 
-— 
a 
In number 14 the leading pa are the following: . 
Monograph of the Lemffcez of the United States, by George F. 
Atkinson. 
The mucilage- and other glands of Plumbaginez, by John Wilson. 
Note on the fertilization of Musa, Strelitzia regine, and Ravenala 
madagascariensis, by G. F. Scott-Elliot. 
nithophilous flowers in South Africa, by G. F. Scott-Elliot. 
Notes on Chondrioderma difforme, and other Mycetozoa, by Arthur 
The ** Notes" are: On cortical fibro-vascular bundles in some 
species of Lecythidez and Barringtoniez ; Vaucheria-galls. 
A New Work on ‘ Plant Morphology.’’—Plant morphology 
has not in general been of such a nature as to commend it to the more 
critical of our scientific men. It has been too largely a merely 
technical discussion of those external structures which can be made 
" use of in classification. So great has been the abuse of the term that 
many of the botanists of the new school refrain from using it lest they 
be misunderstood. What the study of the skins in the old-fashioned 
museums was to zoology, that the so-called ** morphology " of the 
common botanical books has too largely been. The student of animals 
has long since discarded such a profitless labor, and has substituted the 
careful study of structural homologies based upon similarity of devel- 
opment. Animal morphology to-day occupies the greater part of the 
attention of zoologists, while comparatively little time is given to the 
study of purely external and superficial characters. In this way 
zoology has become much more philosophical than its sister science, 
botany. 
A new work on the general morphology of plants (‘Allgemeine 
Morphologie der Pflanzen '"), by Dr. Ferdinand Pax, is written upon 
a somewhat higher plane than most of its predecessors, and will doubt- 
less prove a good example to our text-book makers. It is divided into 
two principal parts, the one treating of the Morphology of the Vege- 
tative Organs, and the other of the Morphology of the Reproductive 
Organs. The vegetative organs are included under “ root’’ and 
- “shoot,” each of which is then discussed under several heads. The 
shoot istreated as follows: (I.) The structure of shootsand the shoot- 
system ; (IL) biology of shoots; (III.) plasticity of shoots; (IV.) the 
life-history of the shoot ; (V.) leaf-sequence in the shoot; (VI.) the 
leaf. The root is treated similarly, but at less length. In the treat- 
ment of the second part of the work, that relating to the reproductive 
