342 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (VOL XXXVI. 
All of which means that to be a safe guide a man must actually 
have done something in the particular field which he undertakes 
to summarize. The book is well made and attractive in appearance. 
E. F. S. 
A New Elementary Text-Book. — A clear indication of the broad- 
ened scope of botanical instruction is afforded by the discarding of 
class books which only a decade or two ago were sufficient for the 
purposes of the ordinary teacher. The books that have replaced 
them are not only very different from their predecessors but from one 
another. Some are questionably the equals in any respect of those that 
are dropping out; others, though they have the merit of giving a 
broadened view of the subject, overshoot the classes they are intended 
for; still others are as one-sided on a new phase of the science as the 
Miis ones were on another. 
As long as there is individuality in teachers, universal satisfaction 
is hardly to be expected from any text-book, and as questions of 
temperance and cruelty have not yet intruded themselves into the 
botany of secondary schools, it is probable that individuality in its 
teachers may long resist the tendency to mechanical uniformity to 
which many forces contribute with considerable persistency. With 
any book, however much the teacher may desire to avoid giving the 
impression that all desirable knowledge is contained between its 
covers, it is difficult to prevent many pupils from at least tacitly hold- 
ing this opinion, and good as many of the recent books are, it is to 
be feared that their use is causing some of the wholesome everyday 
knowledge of one's dooryard plants of a generation ago to be replaced 
by a broader and doubtless more scientific, but unfortunately less 
practically tangible knowledge of vegetation in the abstract. 
To meet the undoubted need of a more comprehensive work than 
Dr. Gray’ s Lessons without losing the advantage of its rational point 
of view, excellent spirit, and good handling, Mr. Leavitt, at the 
request of the botanical department of Harvard University, has based 
on it a little book! which appears admirably adapted to the class 
room, and which, by the introduction of a series of well-devised and 
simple exercises, makes possible that most desirable of evolution E 
the conversion. of the recitation room into a laboratory. GERA. 
2 ‘Leavitt, R. G Outlines of Botany Jor the High School TF BEA and Class- 
Room. Based. on | VS Lessons in cnet American Book Company. 272 pp» 
383 figs. 

