1896.] Botany. 403 



tion. In a prefatory note we are informed that this is but a prodrome 

 to a complete work which the author has in preparation, in which full 

 scientific and popular descriptions are to be given. The little volume 

 before us with its modest price of but one dollar should find its way 

 into the library of every botanist, and all will look with expectation to 

 the completion of the larger work. — Charles E. Bessey. 



Still another High School Botany.— It will not be the fault of 

 the book-makers if the young people of the country are not versed in 

 Botany, for one scarcely takes up a scientific journal nowaday- without 

 finding an announcement of some forthcoming book, or of one just 

 issued. It is a sign of much botanical activity in the public schools 

 for it is very certain that the publishers are bringing these books out 

 in response to what they regard as a sufficient demand. The last one 

 on our table is the Elements of Botany prepared by J Y. Bergen, 

 instructor in Biology in the English High School of Boston. It is, we 

 are told in the preface, "for the most part an expansion of the manu- 

 script notes which have for some years formed the basis of the botany 

 teaching in the Boston English High School." The book is thus to a 

 large extent a growth ; and not a creation. It looks usable, and what 

 is more it has every appearance of being a profitable book to the user. 

 An importance feature of the work is found in its many physiological 

 experiments h are to be made by the pupil. The 



whole work has a strong physiological bias which will be of much value 

 in leading the pupil to the study of the plant in action, rather than to 

 the identification of species. 



Still with all its excellence the book presents the elements of botany 

 in a fragmentary way. After over two hundred pages given to flower- 

 ing plants, we find but twenty-seven pages given to "Some Types of 

 Flowerless Plants." The pupil will imbibe the notion from this book 

 that the flowerless plants are of less importance than those which 

 receive so much more attention. The book should be called the 

 Elements of the Anatomy and Physiology of the Flowering Plants, and 

 thus restricted it is admirable ; but the author was not warranted in 

 calling it the elements of Botany, that is of the whole science, for it 

 certainly does not present the elements of the science of Botany. We 

 are glad to note in the very much abridged Flora at the end of the 

 book a departure from the usual sequence of families, but we regret 

 to see that the Gymnosperms, while given their proper place below the 

 Angiosperms, are described in accordance with the old views as to their 

 morphology. When we describe the staminate cones of the pine as 

 catkins of monandrous flowers, and the ovaliferous cones a- 



