140 
The Stelar Theory . 
is in classes the students of which have had little or no training in 
the exact methods and the exact language of science, (and in popular 
books too), it is most important to “go slowly,’' to introduce 
descriptions of things and processes and the ideas connected with 
them (and consequently the names used for the things and 
processes) one by one, with the most abundant illustration and 
“cross-reference”; but to imagine that it is possible to “do with¬ 
out technical terms in the study of plants is surely a delusion. As 
a matter of fact the author of the work under review scarcely 
makes the attempt, when it comes to the point, and in some 
instances really goes further than is at all needful. In chapter viii. 
on “ The Stem,” for example, he describes its microscopic anatomy 
and uses quite a number of terms. We cannot think the description 
or the terms are necessary in the general scheme of the book, and as 
it stands the first part of the chapter can hardly make any other than 
a confused impression on the reader’s mind. In other places, again, 
technical terms are introduced rather gratuitously. For instance, 
on page 179 we are told that Volvox “reminds one of the 
blastosphere of the animal world,” without a word of explanation as 
to what a “ blastosphere ” may be. 
The book as a whole errs, we should say, in being too crowded 
with miscellaneous information—the student is hardly given time, 
so to speak, to get firm hold of a fact or idea before he is hurried on 
to something else. At the same time it contains a great deal of 
much interest, and the general notion of making the reader think 
about plants as living things, with the most .complicated life- 
struggles and processes always going on in connexion with them is 
well and consistently adhered to. The best part of the book, in our 
opinion, is the concluding chapters on the “ History of the British 
Flora,” “ Woods and Forests ” and “ The Influence of Man.” 
These contain accounts, for the most part capital as well as novel, 
of British vegetation and the effect of human agency upon it, 
treated from a historico-biological point of view. A word of caution 
would have been desirable in introducing the consideration of 
Woods as Organisms. Though the consideration of “ plant- 
associations ” as more or less integrated “individuals” is of tjie 
greatest value, it should not be forgotten, as it sometimes tends to 
be by the more enthusiastic of the followers of Warming and 
Schimper, that such an “ association ” really possesses far less 
integration than a human “society,” which in its turn falls far 
behind that of an individual organism. 
THE STELAR THEORY. 1 
J N the form of a thesis for the degree of doctor in the University 
of Groningen, J. C. Schoute has afforded us a really important 
contribution to the above subject. It is, to our mind, an exceptionally 
clear and thorough summary of the facts and theories bearing on 
every branch of the great problem, yet is at the same time supported 
by very careful and pointed original observations, and, what is of 
chief importance, rounded off by that comprehensive grasp of, and 
1 “ Die Stelar-Theorie”; Groningen, 1902. 
