THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
469 
LIFE HISTORIES OF PLANTS * 
We have here before us a fascinating and much required little volume, from 
the pen of a man of scientific training, who as a biologist has gained some 
reputation. 
The title page hardly bears out the fulness of the statements brought 
forth in this attractive book. 
The work is divided into four parts, beginning with the comparative study 
of plants and animals on a physiological basis. Then follows the living cell, 
with its principal parts and properties. 
The third part treats of the general descriptions of some of the lower 
forms of plant and animal life, commencing with G-loeoeapsa and ending with 
Selaginella. In the last part the connection between flowerless and flowering 
plants is ably handled. 
The writer tells us that the fertilised germ-cell or germ consists of living 
protoplasm, that it feeds in order to manufacture new plant or animal 
substance, grows, and as the active protoplasm wastes, requires oxygen for its 
renewal, gives off C0 2 and thus breathes; — that the germ is contractile, 
undergoes change of form, and possesses that general sensibility which is a 
fundamental property of living matter; and is, in an eminent degree, capable 
of division. Every plant and animal, he continues, begins with such a simple 
early stage, some never getting beyond it. 
As an example the author adduces the yeast-plant, and shows that the 
Amoeba, a simple animal, essentially agrees with the yeast-plant in its life 
processes. 
As we ascend the scale of being, however, the various duties can no longer 
be efficiently performed in this primitive fashion, but require a division or 
reduction of labour. 
The writer then proceeds to the classification of plants and animals, and 
points out that the reproductive organs of plants have always been the main 
test of their genealogical position, while the organs of vegetation, on which their 
nutrition and life depend, have been overlooked ; but that in animals, while the 
reproductive organs are taken into account, other parts are not neglected ; and 
that it will be the business of botanists in the future to regard, also, the 
protective, nutritive, and sensitive system, and the skeleton, as a basis for 
classification. 
Here we have a diagram wherein the primary series of groups of plants 
and animals are compared. Afterwards the author pays attention to the essential 
parts of a plant, the root and shoot, and pointedly describes the various forms 
of the different groups in which the parts occur. Next he treats the body and 
limbs, the most typical forms of animals, in a similar manner to the roots and 
shoots of plants. The special functions of plant and animal are then taken up, 
along with the apparatus employed, and a tabular scheme is given to elucidate 
the relationship between plant and animal in this respect. Furthermore, the 
distinguishing features of each apparatus are pointed out, and the different 
forms with which plants and animals are endowed to carry on the functions of 
life, described. 
There are two distinct influences at work upon every living being, the 
writer continues, viz. — the inorganic and organic conditions of life, or lifeless 
and living matter, and in an accompanying table he expounds the principal 
influences at work affecting the life of the organism. 
Life Histories of Plants. By Professor D. M‘ Alpine. London : Swann, Sonnenschein, Lowrey and Co. 
