THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
understood. It attempts to give detailed word-descriptions—termed 
“pen-portraits”—ot the microscopical characters of the numerous 
parts of plants used in medicine and pharmacy, and includes descrip¬ 
tions of starches, barks, flowers, leaves, herbs, woods, roots, rhizomes, 
seeds, and other plant-structures found in the various Pharmacopoeias 
and used in the pharmacy. 
The book is written in English, the greater part of the actual 
work having been carried out by Drs. Moll and Janssonius ; the 
literary form was given to the various monographs by two lady co¬ 
workers—Miss A. 13. Lebeboer, who, ©wing to ill-health, was unfor¬ 
tunately obliged to relinquish the work when partly finished, and 
Mrs. C. van Eck-de Wiljes, who completed the task. It forms a 
valuable contribution to the literature of Pharmacognosy and shows 
evidence of the greatest care in its production ; one cannot but feel, 
however, that® the authors would have been well advised had they 
sought the collaboration of an English pharmacognosist or botanist 
so as to have given their work a more finished literary style, since the 
laimuasi’e occasionally leaves one in some doubt as to the exact mean- 
ina’ which the authors intend to convey. 
Tl le Pen-Portraits are produced by what the authors term the 
“ portraying method,” by which they mean the application to 
microscopical description of a plan similar to that used by Linnceus 
for the systematic characterisation of plants. A series of “ guiding 
schemes ” for the description of anatomical plant structures of all 
kinds, from single cells and their contents to tissues and plant organs, 
is provided as an introduction to the main body of the work; there 
then follows an alphabetical bibliography, while the remainder of the 
book is occupied with the “ pen-portraits ” themselves. 
One of the primary objects of the book is to replace drawings 
by verbal descriptions; the various monographs, dealing with the 
microscopy of one hundred drugs, are intended to serve as examples of 
the kind of description that may enable the reader to build up 
a mental picture of the microscopical structure without the aid of a 
set of sectional drawings. In every instance the description follows 
an ordered sequence based upon the “ guiding schemes,” and various 
symbols and abbreviated forms of expression are made use of so as to 
shorten the descriptions and make them less tedious to read ; this is 
the characteristic referred to by the writers as a “kind of telegram 
style.” In this way “ completeness of description ” is assured, and 
“ a maximum of information conveyed by a minimum of words.” 
The work is illustrated by 111 diagrams of sections, but no 
figures of individual cells are included. The object of the figures is 
to convey to the reader those elusive features of sections which may 
be referred to under the term “ habit ” and which it is at present 
impossible to express by words alone. By producing descriptions of 
sufficient detail and accuracy, I)rs. Moll and Janssonius consider that 
eventually even these “ habit ” diagrams will become unnecessary. 
The illustrations are very well and carefully produced, and are some 
of the best diagrammatic figures that have ever been published ; they 
have been made from the preparations by means of the camera lucida 
