Abstract
THE new edition of this admirable little text-book deserves a word of notice. It is slightly enlarged, the additions principally dealing with the most important points in economic botany. The illustrations have been increased in number, and the few small errors which had crept into the first edition have been corrected. In the present state of our classificatory knowledge of flowering plants, it would be hardly possible to have a better guide than Prof. Oliver's “Lessons” Something, doubtless, will still have to be supplied by the oral instruction of the teacher. No series of natural objects ever was or ever will be quite comfortable when packed into a classification. The exposition of the term perigynous, for instance, requires that the pupils should be not exacting, but reasonable; there have been found even grown-up and advanced botanists who have allowed themselves to be sceptical about the application of the term to the corolla of the common Holly. They have even ventured to go so far as to wonder how the insertion of the corolla would differ in this case if it were hypogynous.
Lessons in Elementary Botany.
New Edition. By D. Oliver (Macmillan and Co., 1874.)
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Lessons in Elementary Botany . Nature 11, 226 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/011226b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011226b0