404 The American Naturalist. [May, 



" spirally arranged carpel scales," we must be consistent, and put the 

 Gymnosperms where Bentham and Hooker, Gray and Watson put them, 

 as the simplest of the Apetahe.— Charles E. Bessey. 



Popular Botany.— We frequently deplore the ignorance of people 

 in general as to the main facts of botanical science, 

 berate themjforinot taking more interest in what w 

 Yet when we are asked to recommend a book to a non-botanical friend 

 we are sorely puzzled. It is true that we may name Kerner's Natural 

 History of Plants, which no doubt if well read would be greatly edify- 

 ing, but it costs so much, and is so big a book that few can afford the 

 time or money it demands. We know that it is regarded by man v botan- 

 ists as quite the thing to sneer at Grant Allen's books on plants, but 

 we are not of these, and on the contrary have always admired his ability 

 to state scientific facts — dry facts too — in a way which makes them 

 readable and even entertaining. In his latest booklet — The Story of 

 the Plants — he maintains his reputation for entertaining and at the 

 same time instructive writing. We commend it to the non-botanical 

 who wish to get some general notions of plants, and may we also make 

 bold to suggest that our severely critical and truly scientific botanists 

 run it through. It may be suggestive to them, even. 



The author pleasantly tells us " How plants began to be," " How 

 plants came to differ from one another," " How plants eat," " How 

 plants drink," "How plants marry," "Various marriage customs," 

 " The wind as a carrier," " How flowers club together," " What plants 

 do for their young," "The stem and branches," " Some plant-biogra- 

 phies," " The past-histories of plants." That he makes slips here and 

 there may well be granted, but not more, we venture to say, than are 

 made by authors of some more ambitious works. — Charles E. Bessey. 

 Notes of Botanical Papers. — Edward C. Jeffrey in the Dec- 

 ember Annals of Botany figures and describes polyembryony in Ery- 

 ■■■■■■■ ..■.■...'..■'. , , > 



by the division of the fertilized oosphere. — The freshwater Chloro- 

 phycea? of Northern Russia, are enumerated by O. Borge, in a 40 page 

 paper, accompanied by three plates, the latter mainly of new species or 

 varieties. — The Adirondack Black Spruce is treated fully, both eco- 

 nomically an n. F. Fox the superintendent of state 

 forests for New York, in the Report of the Forest Commission for 1894. 

 This paper has been issued under its title as a separate book of eighty- 

 two pages. It is illustrated by many half-tone and two colored plates. 

 —A. P. Morgan continues his studies of North American Fungi in the 



