308 JOUENAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



kept. What assistance they might have been in deriving the laws of 

 inheritance, for instance, if they could have been available for comparison 

 with the results obtained by other workers ! But with the destruction of 

 the plants in the course of selection all record has been lost. The 

 reiteration of the statement that Burbank has refuted Mendel's laws or 

 overthrown one of the fundamental points of Weissmann's germ-plasm 

 theory is not sufficiently convincing to scientific men without detailed 

 records of the experiments on which the refutation is based. The 

 publishers have done their work well, and the photographic illustrations 

 reproduced on plate paper are for the most part excellent. 



" A Text-book of Fungi." By George Massee. 8vo. pp. 427. (Duck- 

 worth & Co., London.) 6s. net. 



The enormous advances in botanical knowledge of recent years have 

 led to the development of text-books dealing with particular groups of 

 plants, and the volume under review is one that will assist, with others, 

 in displacing the advanced general text-book of botany which in late 

 years has become so unwieldy. No up-to-date text-book on fungi in the 

 English tongue was available, and this should meet the wants of the 

 increasing number of those whose duty or pleasure it may be to obtain a 

 general knowledge of this large and important group of plants. The first 

 part of the book deals with the morphology, physiology, and biology of 

 the fungi, accounts being given of recent work in cytological research, the 

 structure and composition of the cell, the anatomy of the various groups, 

 modes of reproduction, and so on, followed by interesting chapters on the 

 liberation and distribution of spores, and a section devoted to the chemistry 

 of the fungi, the last being probably the weakest in the book. The 

 second part deals with fungi in their relation to the diseases of plants, 

 and, needless to say, this part is excellent throughout, and will appeal to a 

 larger public than the first and last portions do. In this part are included 

 a chapter on "Biologic Forms " by Mr. Salmon, and one on " Legislation 

 and Plant Disease," which has already appeared in the "Gardeners' 

 Chronicle." The last and largest part gives an excellent account of the 

 classification of the fungi. 



Where most is so good it is perhaps a pity to find fault, but some 

 parts of the book contain rather more than the usual numbers of ortho- 

 graphical errors, and the student is not helped by the citation of the same 

 form under two different names, as occurs more than once ; e.g. Amanita 

 muscaria is written on p. 168 and under fig. 3 (5), p. 20 ; while on pp. 19 

 and 163 and under fig. 5 (3) the same fungus appears as Agaricus 

 muscarius. Again, a fungus is illustrated as Tilletia tritici at fig. 6, 

 p. 30 ; while on p. 320 the same figure appears over the name T. caries. 

 Again, the term "hydrocarbon " frequently occurs when "carbohydrate " 

 is intended. 



The publication of this book gave a good opportunity for introducing 

 a more definite nomenclature for the various forms of reproductive bodies 

 met with in the fungi, but we find on p. 30 " one of the secondary spores 

 has produced a sporidiolum," while on p. 320 the same structure is 

 called a conidium. Though these and similar things detract somewhat 

 from the value of the book, yet the whole is so excellent that no student 



