REVIEW. 255 



the " sleep " of plants, modes of climbing, etc., etc. This department 

 might have been extended with advantage, and one would have been 

 glad to see something about the general physiology of plants — the 

 nature of their food and the method by -which it is taken in and 

 distributed. It is always worth taking some trouble to impress upon 

 students the fact that the plant is a living, feeding, breathing, 

 organism, and not a mere lifeless " specimen." 



If I may venture to criticise the methods of so experienced a 

 teacher I should like to say that Mr. Thomson appears to me to err 

 on the side of undue elaborateness of terminology, and especially in 

 introducing technical terms before the necessity for them is apparent 

 to the pupil. For instance, a beginner who has only examined the 

 buttercup cannot be expected to see the necessity for applying the 

 term aposepalout to the calyx, but by the time he has got to the Sweet 

 Pea the need for distinctive terms forces itself upon him. Some of 

 the terms of the systematic botanist are quite unsuitable and even 

 mischievous to beginners. What, for instance, can be mere absurd 

 than to say that the cohesion of the sepals of buttercup is aposepalous, 

 or in plain English that they do not cohere at all. 



But it would be manifestly unfair to blame Mr. Thomson for not 

 having reformed the terminology of botanical science in a school text 

 book ; he has produced a book which will sustain his reputation and 

 which ought to have the effect of diffusing the study of botany — the 

 best of science-subjects for the purposes of the average school. 



T. J. P. 



GENERAL NOTES. 



"On Moa Bones." — In the number of the "Journal of Science," 

 just received, there are two matters mentioned, on which a few words 

 may be of use to you and others interested in scientific matters. 



Mr. W. W. Smith speaks of the " ancient dog which was the 

 companion of the moa-hunters " in the Middle Island. The fact of 

 dogs' bones being found in company with those of the moa is, to me, 

 proof positive that the birds were killed by Maoris, as the Maoris seem 

 all to agree in stating that the dog was brought here by their ancestors 

 from Hawaiki, which I feel certain was Central America, and not 

 Polynesia, though possibly some of the eastermost Polynesian islands 

 may have formed a stage on the journey, as they are all evidently 

 peopled from the same source, and all agree in describing it as to the 

 eastward. The native names of places in America are all Polynesian, 

 and have meanings in Maori and its kindred dialects, with only such 

 changes of spelling or sound as actually occur in one or other of those 

 dialects ; while some of the names actually occur in New Zealand. 

 Some old neighbours of mine, who had lived many years in Australia, 

 often spoke of it as a curious fact, that the Negritos there had never 

 domesticated the dog; for though these animals were found there in a 



