REVIEW 
83 
in so great a series of representations for the preparation of which it must 
have been extremely difficult to obtain adequate material. Nevertheless, so 
great and so successful weie the pains taken to secure specimens that it has 
been impossible to represent them adequately without occasionally unduly 
oveiciowding the plates a sacrifice of their artistic arrangement to a desire 
to increase their practical value to those who will use them. 
The plates and figures are accompanied by descriptive matter containing 
much valuable information regarding the living plants which few know so 
well as the author. Some of it is now printed for the first time ; most of it is 
for the first time placed within easy reach of the general reader. It includes 
the results of an extensive series of close personal observations of the plants 
growing under natural conditions and it is therefore in complete harmony with 
the growing tendency to study the plant as a living thing subject to the 
action of natural laws rather than merely as an object confined in a bottle 
or fastened down to a herbarium sheet. And the great value of these 
descriptions, aided as they are by the plates, figures and drawings of various 
kinds, is largely due to the stress laid upon the relations existing between 
the plant and its environment — soil, water, light, animals, etc. Some of the 
theories adopted will no doubt be modified as our knowledge of these things 
increases, but the way in which these questions are dealt with is usually 
admirable. A few inaccuracies in such a mass of descriptive matter are 
inevitable. For example, the Welwitschia cones figured on p. 107 and described 
as “ ready for pollination ” were, without doubt, not only pollinated but also 
fertilised some weeks before they reached the stage represented. And this 
mistake will account for the erroneous statement on another page that 
“ there is scarcely any increase in the size of the cone after fertilisation, nor 
much change in the colour of the scales.” Slips of this character may be 
forgiven perhaps more easily than the author’s attempt (we trust abortive) to 
discredit the well-established name Welwitschia mirabihs and to substitute 
for it W. Bainesii 1 the authority for which is very questionable. 
The most vulnerable part of this work is to be found in the introductory 
theoretical chapters. The work is designed to be a “ guide to the student ” 
and these chapters will presumably be read by those in search ot the funda- 
mental principles of the science. 
It is therefore unfortunate that the macrospore of the gymnosperm is called 
the “ female organ ” and doubly so that both the microspore and the pollen 
grain are described as “ male organs.” The statement that in the Gymno- 
sperms “ both generations, the sexual and asexual, are condensed into one, the 
nucellar tissue only being the equivalent of the prothallium of the ferns 
(p. 90) is a morphological heresy. Similarly with regard to the Angiosperms 
the only meaning which seems to be conveyed by the words “ The alternation 
1 This specific name was first used by Hooker, not by Welwitsch as stated on p. 111. 
