1887] Recent Literature. 357 
It offers only light. Light may be refulgent, and men may 
“Jove darkness rather than light.” So the office of supplying 
to men the energy to act will never be an unimportant one. 
But let that energy be applied in the direction of light, and not 
in any other way. It is the disposition to set ancient dogma 
over modern light that furnishes the raison d'être of the odium 
antitheologicum. The enlightened mind revolts against this 
tyranny over intelligence, and excuses for its authors are not 
always at hand. Let science, however, avoid bigotry on her 
side, and she will gain by the contrast. She can afford to be 
judicial, remembering that the earlier stages of human as of lower 
evolution are all about us, and that they furnish plastic material 
ready to her hand. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Strasburger and Hillhouse’s Practical Botany.'—Some time 
ago we noticed briefly the original German edition of this book, 
which appeared under the name “ Das Kleine Botanische Prac- 
ticum.” We now repeat our conviction of its great value to the 
beginner, and trust that it will be widely used in this country. 
The additions made by the author and English editor have added 
greatly to its usefulness. | 
think it trifling to give particular directions as to the cleaning of 
cover-glasses, the placing of a drop of water upon the slide, etc. 
A dozen pages are devoted to instruments, reagents, etc., and 
then the student “learns to do by doing.” Studies of starch, 
aleurone, protoplasm, chromatophores, tissues, bundles, etc., fol- 
low one another in succession, the student being thus led over 
the field of general histology, after which he takes up in order 
the study of selected examples of the lower plants, the Bacteria, 
Algz, Fungi, Lichens, Mosses, Liverworts, Vascular Cryptogams, 
finally reaching the Gymnosperms and An rms. 
valuable feature of this edition consists of the lists of “ ma- 
z “« Handbook of Practical Botany,” for the botanical laboratory and private stu- 
dent, by E. Strasburger, Professor of i i 
“ Zellbildung und Zelltheilung,” etc. 
M.A., F.L.S., Professor of Botany and Vegetable Physiology Mason Science Col- 
sity of Cambridge. Revised by the author, and with many notes by author and 
editor. With one hundred and sixteen original and eighteen additional illustrations. 
Swan, Sonneschein, Lowrey & Co., Paternoster Square, 1887. 
