1878.] 
Notices of Books. 
269 
Botany: Outlines of Morphology and Physiology. By W. R. 
McNab, M.D., F.L.S., Professor of Botany, Royal College 
of Science, Ireland. London : Longmans and Co. 1878. 
This little work forms part of the series of London Science 
Class-Books, edited by Prof. G. Carey Foster and Mr. P. Magnus, 
and is stated to be intended for pupils who have already acquired 
\ a rudimentary knowledge of botany. The growth of cells of 
different kinds, their aggregation to form tissues, and the general 
external conformation of plants are treated of in the first three 
chapters. The next five are devoted to the nutrition of plants, 
their general conditions of life and growth, their movements and 
modes of reproduction. The book ends with a chapter on classi- 
fication. So far the general arrangement, which is excellent ; 
but we regret to see a constant tendency on the part of the author 
to use terms derived from the Greek and Latin, most of them 
neologisms, when English ones would serve just as well. What 
possible end can it serve to call the stem of a plant a caulome , 
the leaf a pliyllome , and its hairs trichomes , and that, too, with- 
out giving the pupil the least clue to the derivation of these and 
a hundred other similar words ? We must really warn teachers 
against using a book for any class of school-boys whose chief 
end seems to be to cram their minds with such faCts as these — - 
that “ imperfeCt self-fertilising flowers are kleistogamous that 
“ flowers fertilised by the agency of birds are called ornithophi- 
lous or that “ in sympodial dichotomies the sympodium con- 
sists either of the fork-branches of the same side, right or left, 
the bostrychoid (helicoid) dichotomy, as seen in the leaf of 
Adiantum pedatum ; or the branches are alternately right and 
left, the cicinnal (scorpioid) dichotomy of many of the Selagi- 
nellas .” We thought that pedantic cramming was being speedily 
eradicated from our educational system, but the noxious plant 
seems to be still flourishing. 
A Treatise on Photography. By W. de Wiveslie Abney, 
F.R.S., &c. Text-Books of Science. London : Longmans 
and Co. 1878. 
Captain Abney has already earned the gratitude of both pro- 
fessional and amateur photographers by his little work “ Instruc- 
tion in Photography,” published some twelve months since. 
His first book, however, was almost entirely practical in its 
nature, the theory of photography being only treated of inci- 
dentally. The present work fully supplements the first, and 
enters into full details with regard to the theory of the subjeCt. 
It must not be thought that the author confines himself entirely 
