The Biology of Flowering Plants

Abstract

THE title of Dr. Skene's book can be interpreted in various ways and, at its widest, would embrace the entire field of botany; this could only be dealt with in the most superficial manner in the compass of a single book. Here, however, Dr. Skene has restricted himself to a consideration of the relation of the individual to its environment in the sense usually connoted by the term autecology, more particularly as regards those aspects which might be included under applied physiology. In his treatment the author has succeeded in incorporating much of the physiological work of recent years, and in a very readable manner points to its bearing on the life of the plant in Nature. The exposition is in general clear, and if the author has at times failed to steer a middle course between the Scylla of technical expression and the Charybdis of obscurity, he has at least avoided the shoals of ambiguity and misconception.

The Biology of Flowering Plants.

By Dr. Macgregor Skene. (Biological Handbooks Series.) Pp. xi + 523 + 8 plates. (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1924.) 16s. net.