Elementary Practical Biology—Vegetable

Abstract

THIS book is welcome more as a sign of the ever-growing attention paid to plant-structure than for any peculiar merit it has as a guide to the subject. The author fairly expresses his indebtedness to such practical books as Bower and Vines's, and claims originality only for his arrangement and treatment of the subject. The arrangement is as follows:— First comes an introduction dealing with the necessary apparatus and the preparation, &c., of objects. This is very concisely and sensibly done. Part I. deals with general vegetable morphology, treating in due sequence of the cell, the tissues, the systems of tissues, the apices of stems and roots, and cell-multiplication or cell-reproduction. Part II. is devoted to the Cryptogamia, beginning with the Fungi and working up to the vascular forms. Part III. is confined to the Gymnosperms, and Part IV. to the Angiosperms. So much for the arrangement. There may be no guide to practical work covering precisely all these types in this way, but text-books are by no means wanting which contain this arrangement of matter. The originality here is therefore not at all striking—perhaps fortunately so. As for the treatment, the student is conducted through the course with a baldness in the directions to note this and observe that, which reminds one of the style of a personal conductor through an historic building. The book has a purely practical aim, with the excellent purpose of preventing “cram”; but a student who should undergo this course of instruction, noting and observing no more than he is here directed to do, would find himself, at the end of it, the dispirited possessor of a mass of information which would result in a sad fit of mental indigestion. A practical guide of this kind throws too much of the burden of instruction upon the lecturer whose course accompanies it. The style of the whole book leads one to doubt the author's claims as a botanist to write it, and though it it may be a suitable guide to those who have to acquire a knowledge of botany in the course of their studies, it is practically useless for the rearing of botanists. Though one is reluctant to attribute a wrongly-spelt word to other than the conveniently necessary printer, the occurrence of Felicineæ, not once, but regularly, and, moreover, in the boldest and most conspicuous type of the headings of sections, does tempt one to think that the printer's fault lay in not having corrected it. A detailed criticism of the book would exhibit the author's imperfect acquaintance with the types discussed and his errors in description. Such, however, is beyond the scope of this notice.

Elementary Practical Biology—Vegetable.

By Thomas W. Shore. (London: Churchill, 1887.)