Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/141

Rh a way that the reader, in considering any organ, may, if he will, actually sketch each part as he proceeds, and thus make a diagrammatic plan or picture of the entire structure. The book is not for idle students, but for serious ones, and it is not a text-book or intended to take the place of one; and it can serve its true purpose only when used by students who have had laboratory practice as well as lectures in histology, and have thus examined the actual structures.

In his work on Elementary Botany Professor Atkinson introduces the method which he has found successful in teaching beginners. Many of the newer botanical text-books, in reacting against the plan of presenting first the higher types of plant life, overwhelm the student not only with a multitude of unfamiliar forms, but demand from him powers of comparison and analysis that are generally the result of much scientific discipline. In this book the pupil receives some preliminary guidance in habits of correct induction. By studying the processes of transpiration, nutrition, growth, and irritability in plants belonging to higher as well as lower groups, he learns the universality of these life principles, and is led to see the foundations for sound generalization. This the author considers vastly more important than the knowledge of individual plants. The student, however, in this investigation becomes acquainted with special forms among the lower plants, and is thus prepared to take up morphology systematically. This topic begins with the study of Spirogyra, and ends with an outline of twenty lessons in the angiosperms. The final third of the book is devoted to ecology, the study of plants in their natural surroundings and of their modifying factors—climate, soil, topography, etc. The illustrations, which are above the average throughout the work, are in this division exceedingly good. The descriptive text of the same section is entertaining enough to be used as a class reader, and would interest those unfamiliar with botany. There are several slight errors to be corrected in a future edition. In the table of measures a kilometre is made to equal one hundred instead of one thousand metres, and the references to plates are occasionally wrong. On page 345 the reference should be 449, and on page 349 should be 458 in place of 457. In describing pollination of the skunk cabbage, the words "rub off" are ambiguous. The uninitiated might suppose that the insect obtained pollen from the stigmas instead of depositing it there. The book is not intended for recitation, but for reference and as a guide in study. It is supplied with an appendix upon the collection and preservation of material, and an index.

A notice of a book of this nature is justified in this column, since it contains much that will be of interest to the student of ethnology, folklore, and cognate subjects. It is interesting to get a glimpse of matters pertaining to social customs, ways of thinking, and the occurrences which animated these ways among the Japanese a thousand and more years ago. The author says, "It is a remarkable and, I believe, an unexampled fact that a very large and important part of the best literature which Japan has produced was written by women."

The preparation of his Elementary Text-Book of Botany was undertaken by Mr. Vines to meet a demand which appeared to exist for a less bulky and expensive volume than his Students' Text-Book. A more important feature than the diminution of the bulk is claimed in the simplification which the contents have undergone from the omission of certain difficult and still debatable topics. The usual divisions into morphology, anatomy, physiology, and systematic botany are followed; but the caution is appended that it must not be forgotten that these are all parts of one subject, different methods of studying one object—the plant. Hence they must be pursued together. "For instance, the morphology of the