488 The American Naturalist. [June, 
useful book, cryptogamic botany " has gone through little less 
than a revolution." The present work is an attempt to bring 
within reach of botanists an acquaintance with the present 
state of our knowledge of this branch of science. How fully 
the authors have succeeded trial alone will tell. That they 
have made a useful book is evident at a mere glance. 
The general plan of the work may be made out from the 
following general subdivisions of the subject, which correspond 
to unnumbered chapters in the book, viz. : Vascular Cryp- 
togamia; Muscineae ; Characeae ; Algae; Fungi; Mycetozoa ; 
Protophyta. As will be seen, the work begins with the higher 
forms and passes to the lower, a plan defended by the authors 
by the statement that " to the general student 'from the known 
to the unknown ' is a very sound principle." They say, how- 
ever, that, " had our purpose been to construct, theoretically^ 
a genealogical tree for the lower forms of vegetable life, the 
former course (commencing at the bottom) must necessarily 
have been pursued, and in the labor in favor of proceeding" 
from the simple to the more complicated types," From which 
one would infer that this book is useful only to the general 
student. It will, on the contrary, prove a useful handbook for 
the laboratory student, in spite of its erroneous plan. Had our 
authors commenced with the lower plants, and worked up 
from them, they would have made their book still more useful, 
not only to the scientific student, but in according to our 
observation, to the " general student " as well. 
Again, it is seen that there is here a partial " reversion to 
the time-honored division " of the lower plants, whereby the 
Algae and the Fungi are recognized as natural groups. It is 
only a partial reversion, however, and botanists of the old 
school will scarcely recognize in the modern groups, the older 
ones of the same names. The Algae suffer the loss of the 
Characeae, the Protococcoideae, the Diatomaceae, and the Cy- 
anophyceae, while the Fungi lose the Myxomycetes, the 
Acvasieae, and the Schizomycetes, and are augmented by 
having swallowed bodily the whole of the Lichens. 
A feature of the work, which is to be especially commended,, 
is the very general Anglicizing of terms ; e. g. sporange for 
sporangium; archegone for archegonium; antherid for antheri- 
dium, etc., etc. 
The amount of space assigned to each group is as follows : 
Vascular Cryptogamy, 122; Muscineae, 40; Algae (in the 
widest sense), 174 ; Fungi (in the widest sense), no. Berke- 
