Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/786

706 of Botany in the University of Vienna, and have endeavored to speak of it as its merits deserve. The examination of the concluding volume only enhances our appreciation of its value, and, we might add, of its interest, for it has real interest, such that the unscientific or even the casual reader may find that it has a story to tell him. The introduction to the new parts comprises a brief review of the sources of a history of plants, showing how the description of the external characters of plants as given by Theophrastus and Pliny and the earlier modern writers gradually expanded into the study of the conditions of their growth, reproduction, and dissemination. Then came the discovery of fossil plants, leading to the extension of botany to the study of the ancestral history of existing flora and the derivation and development of species. This sketch outlines the order of presentation in these two half volumes, which follows the stages of development of the science. "A history of the entire plant world considered as a single great community must be preceded by a history of species. But each species is the sum of numberless individuals, which are alike in constitution and have the same external characteristics, and a history of species therefore presupposes a knowledge of the history of the individual. Accordingly, our first business is to describe rejuvenescence, multiplication, and distribution of individuals, and to show by what means a plant, considered as a separate organism, maintains itself, takes possession of its habitat and is enabled to keep its hold on that habitat, up to the moment when it is replaced by descendants endowed with a vitality of their own." The discussion of the Genesis of Plant Offspring relates to asexual reproduction by spores and thallidia, and by buds or roots, stems, and leaves; to reproduction by means of fruits, under which the process from the beginning and the office of the pollen, its protection, the means of its dispersion by wind and by animals, the agencies that attract animals, the crossing of flowers, and autogamy are described; and to changes in reproductive methods, including the replacement of fruits by offshoots, parthenogenesis, and heteromorphism and alternation of generations. The History of Species follows, comprising the nature, alteration in the form, origin, distribution, and extinction of species. The work is completed by a glossary of fourteen pages, and on index of fifty-nine closely printed pages.

Nursery Ethics is an attempt, and a very successful one, to deal with the big people of the nursery, and to outline the moral relations which ought to exist in this little kingdom between the governing powers and the governed. It is a word well and wisely spoken to mothers and to fathers. It is not formal enough to be called a system of morals. It might even be said to lack what Matthew Arnold is said to have lacked—"a philosophy with coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative principles"—but we find it on this account more effective. Back of the running comment on nursery affairs there lie a consistency and thoroughness which indicate that Mrs. Winterburn has kept her fundamental ethical axioms well in mind, if not in type, and has done no violence to them. In this respect the little book is eminently philosophic. Its one aim is to secure justice for the little people. It is a modern and improved form of Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. Those whose sense of humor has been touched by Anstey and Frank Flockton, or whose sense of justice has been aroused by that too frequent sight, the abuse of parental authority, will readily admit that no rights are so sacred and inviolable as the rights of little children, because none are so absolutely defenseless. Such a crusade might easily tempt one to rhetorical extremes, but Mrs. Winterburn has shown the same self-restraint in dealing with her literary child that she so strongly recommends to other parents in dealing with their children of flesh and blood. The treatment is full of feeling: it is enriched with deep, womanly sentiment, but it is also calm and clear, and its suggestions have a definiteness which gives them practical value.

In considering the attitude of parents