i 3 2 
Reviews 
RECENT TEXT-BOOKS OF BOTANY 
1. Fritch, F. E. and Salisbury, E. J. An Introduction to the 
Structure and Reproduction of Plants, 1920. Pp. viii and 458, 
with 2 plates and 230 figures in the text. G. Bell and Sons, 
London. Price 15s. 
2. Jones, W. Neilson, and Rayner, M. C. A Text-Book of 
Plant Biology. Pp. viii and 262, with 6 plates and 36 figures 
in the text. Methuen and Co., London, 1920. Price 7s. 6 d. 
3. Small, J. A Text-Book of Botany for Medical and Pharmaceutical 
Students. Pp. x and 681, with 1350 figures in the text. J. A. 
Churchill, London, 1921. Price 25s. 
Ten years ago it was still a reproach to British Botany that in spite of the 
existence of a few admirable elementary books (such as Scott’s Structural 
Botany) students had to depend for their text-books mainly on translations 
from the German, though the study of modern scientific botany had long been 
securely established in this country. Today such a ground of reproach no longer 
exists. Recently we had occasion to review Professor Bower’s Botany of the 
Living Plant (1919) 1 , and the three works cited at the head of this review are 
excellent specimens, appearing within a few months of one another, of the 
activity of some of our middle aged and younger botanists in endeavouring 
to supply students with more or less comprehensive introductions to the study 
of plants. 
In turning over the pages of these volumes one cannot but be impressed 
afresh with the enormous and ever-widening content of modern botany. At 
no time has the study of plants been more active and widespread; and it con¬ 
stantly tends to come into contact with more and more distinct departments 
of human knowledge and activity 2 . At no time, certainly, has it been of more 
actual and potential importance to the human race. This modern development of 
botany has necessarily and inevitably taken place on specialised lines, resulting 
in the development of numerous departments of knowledge each occupying 
the life-time labours of many research workers. To become thoroughly ac¬ 
quainted with the contents of more than a very few of these departments is 
quite beyond the powers of any individual. 
The problem of writing an adequate introductory text-book to this vast 
field of knowledge is thus one of considerable difficulty. In the first place the 
writer has to make up his mind as to what aspects of the subject it is of the 
greatest importance to bring most prominently before the student. If he 
1 New Phytologist, 18, p. 259. 
2 This is amusingly illustrated by the appearance on p. 191 of Professor Small’s 
text-book, under the heading of “The Phispiral” of a reproduction of Turner’s picture 
“Ulysses deriding Polyphemus,” and on p. 394 of a diagram of the Uranium-actinium 
and the Uranium-radium disintegration series! 
