Review. 
261 
But the thing we chiefly miss in the book, regarded as repre¬ 
senting the content of a somewhat extended course for the student 
of the elements of botany, and especially having regard to the 
author’s statement of the equivalence of “ elementary ” and 
“ fundamental,” is the absence of any serious attempt to grapple 
with the constitution and biochemistry of the plant cell, topics 
which must form the basis of any real understanding of “ the Living 
Plant.” We may still be very far from being able to “ explain ” 
the whole mechanism of a living cell in terms of chemistry and 
physics, but after all we do know something of what the protoplast 
is and of the way in which the protoplast works, and we can directly 
relate some of its activities to its physical and chemical nature and 
properties. It is no more difficult to frame an account of this subject 
which is intelligible and interesting to the student than to deal 
similarly with heredity and alternation of generations ; and it is 
impossible to deny that the former is even more fundamental than 
the two latter. Until these things are faced it is impossible to 
carry the basic scientific concept of Causation into the necessary 
foundation of the study of the plant as a living organism. We must 
confess to a great deal of ignorance, but the student never minds 
that if we make an honest effort to explain to him what we do know, 
and what we only think, and why. To avoid this task seems to he to 
abrogate the first and most vital function of the teacher of science. 
And it is the too common avoidance of it among even the most distin¬ 
guished teachers of botany, such as the author of this book, and the 
consequences of that avoidance, which lead one to the conviction 
that the teaching of elementary botany is in need of radical reform. 
The hook is written with that ease, fluency and lucidity of style 
of which its author is a master. It deals with the familiar story 
of the seed plant and with the stories of the other groups in an 
attractive and most readable way, and, it is unnecessary to say, with 
an assured mastery of discrimination between the essential and the 
unessential among the morphological and “biological” features 
which the different groups display. 
We have noticed two slips, to which the author would no 
doubt like to have his attention drawn. The description of the 
corm of Crocus (p. 165) is misleading if not inaccurate, and the 
statement on p. 372 that the brown colour of Phaeophyceae depends 
on a pigment “ phycophaein ” is now obsolete. 
The illustrations are exceedingly good, many of them drawn 
by the practised and skilful hand of the author, and many 
others—among the most admirable—by Dr. J. M. Thompson: 
the selection from figures already published is judicious; and all are 
excellently reproduced. 
