NOTES AND COMMENT 



the horticulturist and the forester, yet it is calculated to place this 

 relation on a much saner and more balanced basis than some of the 

 recent texts which we have seen. It is designed, as Professor Coulter 

 states, to provide "the practical application of knowledge, rather than 

 practical work without knowledge." The first of the two parts into 

 which the book is subdivided is given to the general morphology of 

 the vegetable kingdom, with brief treatment of the special morphology 

 of reproductive parts. Throughout the discussion of the groups of 

 cryptogamic plants the physiological performance of the organs receives 

 adequate attention, and the space devoted to the seed plants is largely 

 given to the leaf, stem, and root in their environic relations. The 

 second part of the book, which is the more original section, opens with 

 a brief sketch of the physiological processes of plants and the nature 

 of soils, and proceeds through a discussion of methods of propagation 

 and breeding to an account of some of the most important cereals, 

 vegetables, fruits, and ornamental plants, with a brief chapter on for- 

 estry and a concluding one on plant diseases. The two parts form 

 a year's work, and they should be used in the order of their presentation. 

 The existence of such a text should do much to check the multiplication 

 of high school courses in agriculture, which are usually about as rational 

 in their inception and execution as would be a course in electrical 

 engineering given to students who had received no training in physics 

 or mathematics. 



Dr. W. A. Cannon, of the Desert Laboratory, contributes to the 

 Bulletin of the American Geographical Society (July, 1913) an article 

 on The Physiography and Vegetation of the Algerian Sahara, based 

 on his exploration of that region in the winter of 1910-1911. The 

 region described lies south of the Saharan Atlas, on the course of a 

 journey from Laghouat to Ouargla and thence northward to Biskra. 

 The sparse vegetation of the stony deserts, the sandy deserts, the 

 alluvial flats and of the chotts and oueds is described, particularly in 

 the light of the relation which the types of root systems bear to the 

 distribution and density of stand. Outside the oueds, with their high 

 water table, the actual number of plant individuals is greatest in the 

 shallowest soil, owing to the limited horizontal extension of the roots as 

 compared with those of the few plants which inhabit the deeper soils. 



The first of the papers read before the Botanical Society of America 

 at Cleveland in the Symposium on Permeability and O-smotic Pressure 



