266 Recent Literature. [March 
the absence of carnivorous mammalia, and hence the increase of 
rabbits, kangaroos, etc., has little natural check excepting that 
of deficient food-supply. In the United States the case is far 
different. Here the opossum, raccoon, several species of weasels, 
foxes, and cats furnish an effective restriction to the increase of 
any form of animal life sufficiently large to attract their atten- 
tion. If the keepers will permit the presence of these carnivora 
in the preserves there need be no fear of excessive increase of 
the rabbits, and quite a zoological porden might in this way be 
maintained. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Vines’s Physiology of Plants..—This important work has been 
before the scientific public for somewhat more than half a year, 
-and has in that time received the critical attention of most of the 
vegetable physiologists. It has already taken its place as an 
admirable cyclopedia of vegetable ee it from which the 
botanical lecturer can draw ad libitum in the preparation of his 
notes. This use of the book is much favored by its form, the 
various topics being treated in twenty-three “Lectures.” With 
the exception of the tables, which in some parts of the book are 
pretty freely used, there is ‘little in it to remind one of the usual 
text-boo e style i is eminently that of the lecturer before an 
audience, and, while it is pleasant to read, one cannot help think- 
ing that it might have all been given in the book in much less 
space. There is a notable absence of any indication of the scale 
upon which the figures are drawn in the illustrations, an over- 
sight which we attribute to the emphasis of the “ lecture” idea 
in the book. 
The general sequence of subjects may be understood from the 
headings of the successive chapters, as follows: the structure 
water in plants; transpiration, the food of plants; metabolism, 
growth, irritability, reproduction. In some cases several chapters 
or a are given to each topic; thus “irritability” is dis- 
cussed in seven lectures, covering 226 pages, or very pies one- 
third of the book. 
_ Ina work of this kind one may demand exactness of state- 
ment and a freedom from contradictions. It is puzzling to the 
reader to be told on page 22, that “in some cases it is evident 
1 Lectures on the by ca of Plants. By Sidney Howard Vines, M.A., D.Sc., 
F. ym the Univers Lecturer of Christ’s ren ego Cambridge, and Reader in Bot- 
% Wi 96 & ea oe niversity Press, 1 "B86, ph x., 710. 
