294 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



The book contains ten chapters. The first two discuss Haeckel's 

 "Monism" and his "Law of Substance," with quotations; and he 

 observes : " To curb these extravagant pretensions it is only necessary 

 to consider soberly what these physical laws really assert." Sir Oliver 

 then deals with the Development of Life, showing the fallacy of Haeckel's 

 contentions, which maintain that all of man's psychical phenomena are 

 foreshadowed in the prinifieval cell." In other words, he (Haeckel) appeals 

 to a presumed sentiment of biologists against the knowledge of the 

 physicist in his own sphere — a strange attitude for a man of science. 

 After this it is less surprising to find him ignoring the elementary axiom 

 that "action and reaction are equal and opposite." With regard to 

 " Religion and Philosophy," " Mind and Matter," " Will and Guidance," 

 " Further Speculation as to the Origin of Life," i^c, these are all excellently 

 treated ; and if Haeckel's followers were not so prejudiced in his favour, 

 and accept him almost as infallible authority on monism, this book 

 ought to do much good in counteracting the extravagances of the author 

 of the " Riddle." 



" Seasonal "Botany." By M. O'Brien Harris. 8vo. 56 pp. (Blackie 

 & Son, London.) 8(L 



A supplementary text-book, including : I. Outline Course of General 

 Botany ; IL Detailed Course of Physiological Botany. 



This little book is divided into two parts : Part I. contains a syllabus 

 of a first year's course (two pages) ; ditto second year's (one page), with 

 a two-paged table of procedure for autumn, spring, and summer, i.e. five 

 pages in all. 



Part II. is on physiological (laboratory) work and occupies thirty-four 

 pages. The reader will thus see the obvious bias of the authoress. The 

 twO'paged syllabus of the first year is a " summary, showing the facts 

 (chiefly morphological) which underlie the work of the first year," e.g. 

 plants, flowers, fertilisation, seed fruit, roots, reserves, stems, and leaves. 

 Nothing is said of the dissections and written descriptions of plants 

 which form the most valuable part of educational botany for beginners. 

 The statement that " the blackboard or the pupil's note-book shows at 

 the end of a lesson its main points " seems to indicate the faulty system 

 of trying to teach by lectures, instead of entirely by the pupils' own 

 observations on living plants. 



The sentence " Fruits are . . . formed from one carpel or the union 

 of several" is not sufficiently accurate; for in many plants the fruit 

 consists of numerous separate carpels, as the buttercup, strawberry, &c. 

 The following is also misleading : " Plants are fixed creatures [many algae 

 are not] ; therefore they attain a greater size than animals." It would be 

 difficult to find a sentence requiring more qualifications. An oak tree is 

 usually larger than a dog ; but the latter is larger than a daisy, and lives 

 longer than any annual ! 



The sole value of the book resides in Part II., for the sake of the 

 numerous experiments ; but these, too, require a quahfication, for they 

 are entirely confined to phenomena of plant-life as treated in the abstract. 

 There is a total absence of any attempt to correlate them with plants as 

 growing wild in nature, i.e. in their natural surroundings. The writer 



