154 
T1TE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
elementary chemistry or physics. But the general plan of a text¬ 
book must be accepted for better or worse, and the fact that a 
second edition has already been necessary is evidence that Prof. 
Bovver’s volume has met with a welcome. 
About fifty pages have been added, including a chapter on “The 
Living Cell” (pp. 29-37) and one on “Evolution, Homoplasy, 
Homology, and Analogy ” ; the object of the latter is to co-ordinate 
the two parts of the book. Prof. Bower does well in following the 
sequence which has ruled in the development of Botany, by taking 
the dowering plants drst and devoting the greater part of the course 
to their study. The brief exposition of what is understood by an 
evolutionary study of plants then follows as an introduction to the 
outlines of the characters of the earlier groups, from the simpler to 
the more complex, which form the subject of the second portion of 
the book. An appendix of about fifty pages is devoted to a descrip¬ 
tion of a few types of flower, with notes on the natural families 
to which they belong. Here Prof. Bower is evidently not on his 
native heath! The arrangement of the Monocotyledons does not 
follow generally accepted views of affinities; they are represented by 
three Orders in the following sequence :—Liliales, Orchidales, and 
Glumales. The last-named include the rushes, along with the sedges 
and grasses, Juncacece finding a place here because of their grass¬ 
like habit, though it is admitted that the dowers are of the liliaceous 
type- 
The book is well printed and beautifully illustrated, but the copy 
sent for review has evidently been bound with hot needle and burning 
thread, and is already beginning to disintegrate. 
A. B. R. 
Starch and Starch Products. By Harold A. Auden. Crown Svo, 
pp. xiii, 121, and 19 figs. Pitman, London. 1922. Price 3 s. 
This little volume, one of Pitman’s “ Common Commodities and 
Industries ” series, contains much interesting and useful information— 
chemical, botanical, and technological. The frontispiece is appro¬ 
priately the picture of Gerard (from his Herbal, 1597) with a branch 
of potato in his hand and wearing an Elizabethan starched ruff. In 
successive chapters the author gives the history of the use of starch, 
its properties, and the various sources from which it is obtained com¬ 
mercially—potato, rice and other cereals, sago, yam, arrowroot, and 
others. Some account is given of each plant, its cultivation and the 
method of preparation of starch from it. The later chapters deal 
briefly with some of the products of starch, glucose, dextrine, and 
gum, and the fermentation products; reference is made to the 
brewing of beer from barley 3700 years ago in Egypt. The figures 
illustrate the habit of the starch-yielding plant and the preparation 
of starch and its products; some are rather poor. 
A. B. R. 
