Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/139

Rh activity of investigators in this field in the last few years, that Professor Goebel has taken 500 pages for its present treatment. Of these 500 pages three fourths of the space is given to that section of the vegetable world popularly known as flowerless plants; for it is here, where so much was uncertain, that research has been most active.

Professor Goebel is himself an original investigator in botany, and the present volume contains not only the changes required by the recent literature of the science, but the results of his own research. Under the circumstances, it will be no matter of surprise that the provisional classification of the past has given place to considerable and important changes. Among these it may be mentioned in the first place, that the division of the vegetable kingdom into cryptogams and phanerogams is out of date. The discovery of the true relations between phanerogams (gymnosperms and angiosperms) and the vascular cryptogams has revealed that the gymnosperms, mosses, and vascular cryptogams form a natural group aptly described as Archægonatæ. "It would be thoroughly in accordance with our present knowledge to divide the forms of the vegetable kingdom into thallophytcs, Archægonatæ, and angiosperms." For the sake of simplicity of statement, however, the gymnosperms and angiosperms still form one division called seed-plants (spermaphytes). The vegetable kingdom is divided into four groups: Thallophytes, briophytes (mosses), vascular cryptogams, and seed-plants. In classifying the lowest group, or thallophytes, it is now established that lichens do not form a special class distinct from algæ and fungi, but must be ranked with fungi. In consequence of the present transitional character of botanical terminology, Professor Goebel has found it difficult to explain the relations of the different groups to each other, and has been obliged to modify the terminology of previous editions. But he has given a very full "Explanation of Terms" at the end of the volume. A prominent feature of the book is an attempt to make use of a consistent terminology based upon homology; and Professor Goebel expresses the hope that the work of improvement will continue until "we shall no longer call the same object in one place a 'placenta,' in another a 'receptacle' or a 'columella,' or use the term 'frons' for the thallus of a Marchantia or a Pellia, or apply the term pro-embryo alike to the protonema of the mosses, the prothallium of ferns, and the suspensor of spermaphytes." This volume will be indispensable to teachers who care to give their pupils the latest product of scientific inquiry.

is little in this book to remind one of the times when "54° 40' or fight" was the political cry of the day, and of the great excitement which our country suffered over the Oregon question. Yet the subject of the dispute is the precise territory that was involved in that controversy. That the memory of that dispute should have so lapsed in forty years that it should be only incidentally referred to, if at all, in this volume of nearly eight hundred pages, is a silent comment on the changes that may be wrought in a generation, and a sign of the growing civilization of the age. The period covered by this history is from 1792 to 1887. It is divided by the author into six divisions: First, the discoveries, claims, disputations, and diplomacies relative to the ownership and division of the domain, commonly referred to as Nootka affairs. The second epoch began with the coming of the fur-traders by land, and continued until 1849, when colonization and colonial government began on Vancouver Island. The third term, during which the Hudson Bay Company was still everywhere dominant, lasted till 1858, when the gold discovery overturned the existing order of things, and raised the mainland into a colony. The fourth period, during which there were two colonies and two governors, concluded with the union of the island and mainland under one colonial government in 1866. The affairs of the confederated colony constitute the fifth era, terminating in confederation with Canada in 1871. The present may be regarded as the sixth period. At this time,