No. 453-] NOTES AND LITERATURE. 



in measured and dignified language much that is good to know and 

 to remember in connection with the life-work of one of the torch- 

 bearers of science, but there is one respect in which we would like 

 to have been told more. Zittel as a teacher, text-book writer, 

 ardent collector and museum administrator, Zittel as an investigator 

 thirsting for scientific discovery — in all these capacities he is pre- 

 sented to us ; but enough has not yet been said in regard to him as 

 a philosopher, as a theorizer upon the vast store of empirical knowl- 

 edge of which he was the possessor. He was an excellent systema- 

 tist, and the faculty of coordination was developed in him to a 

 remarkable degree. Though he discovered no new laws of natural 

 history, yet he had faith in the discovery of others, and he believed 

 in certain principles and methods of drawing philosophical con- 

 clusions, as sincerely as he disbelieved in certain others, nor did he 

 always insist upon his own personal judgment, often deferring to the 

 opinions of colleagues in whom he had confidence. On such matters 

 as these we should eagerly welcome more light. 



BOTANY. 



Maple Sap Flow.^— This paper, by Messrs. Jones, Edson, and 

 Moore, and edited by J. H. Hills, Director of the Agricultural Exper- 

 iment Station of Vermont, is unusual in two ways. It is a very 

 good paper, giving the carefully considered results of experiment and 

 observation sufficiently extended to justify general conclusions. In 

 the second place the paper is unusual for it is the first on this sub- 

 ject since Clark's papers in 1873 and 1874.2 As I have said else- 

 where,3 it is surprising that American botanists at the Agricultural 

 Experiment Stations in the states where maple-syrup and maple- 

 sugar making is an important industry have not carefully studied 

 the phenomena, at least from an economic standpoint. The present 

 paper is written both from the economic and from the physiological 

 standpoint, and the plant physiologist will find in it data which he 



' Bulletin Vertnont Agrk. Exp. Station, No. 103, Dec, 1903- 

 ' Report Mass. Agric. Coll., 1873-4; Report Mass. State Bd. Agric . No. 22, 

 1874. 



^ Text Book of Plant Physiology, 1903. 



