Abstract
IT is rather difficult to speak with justice about Prof. Barnes' little book. The idea, set forth in his preface, of attempting to give a general and somewhat philosophical account of plant life such as shall be useful to young readers, is an ambitious one, and the author has, here and there, almost realised parts of it. But we must confess that, taken as a whole, the book is not satisfactory—it is more provocative of yawning and somnolence than keen interest. At times, too, it is amazingly behind the times. The discredited figures of centrosomes are reproduced with a fidelity worthy of a better cause, and the account given of the ascent of sap is worse than misleading. Some of the figures, too, are very bad, and it is difficult to see the use of a delineation of a Fucus egg, such as presented in Fig. 42.
Plant Life, considered with special reference to Form and Function.
By Charles Reid Barnes, Pp. vii + 428. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1898.)
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Our Book Shelf. Nature 58, 519 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058519a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058519a0