Mrs London's First Book of Botany, for Schools and Young Persons

Abstract

WE wish we could speak more favourably of this prettily got-up little book. Mrs. Loudon's writings did good service in cultivating a love of plants among the last generation; but when a new edition of an old manual is brought out, with the date of the current year on the title-page, and an editor's name as having “revised” it, we expect that it will be corrected by the light of the present state of scientific knowledge. In the present instance this has not been adequately done; of the inadequacy we may give but two instances. At p. 18 prickles are described as metamorphosed leaves, instead of, as they really are, indurated hairs, or processes of the epidermis. But a more serious erroneous description occurs in the case of the spores of ferns, which are said to differ from seeds “in not requiring to be fertilised by pollen” (do seeds require to be fertilised by pollen?) The reader is left to suppose that the young fern-plant springs direct from the spore, no reference whatever being made to the recent discoveries of the functions of the pro-thallium, archegonia, and antheridia. The arrangement is good, as also are some of the illustrations; but the book cannot be used as a manual by teachers or lecturers, without the errors being corrected from some other handbook.

Mrs London's First Book of Botany, for Schools and Young Persons. New edition, revised and enlarged. By David Wooster. (London: Bell and Daldy, 1870.)