# Midland Naturalist/Volume 01/Review (Notes of Lessons on Elementary Botany)

Review.
After reading the numerous text-books of Elementary Botany which the last few years have produced, and which repeat the old, old truths in a very similar and monotonous way, it is a relief to find one which strikes out a new line as this does. Were it for nothing else, it would be remarkable for the entire absence of the stock woodcuts, which have been repeated in one book after another till they have grown wearisome. Every one of the drawings, mostly by the author himself, with which this little book is adorned, is new. This point, however, concerns more the teacher than the taught; it is of greater consequence that they are exceedingly numerous, and bear the mark of having been copied direct from nature, with the exception of a few, which are all the more conspicuous amidst the general excellence. Some of them, as those illustrating the terms monœcious and diacious, will be more instructive to young readers than a lengthy paragraph of description. A few of the illustrations are misleading, noticeably that of the cone (p. 23,) the salver-shaped corolla (p. 20,) the silique (p. 41,) and the lichen (p. 85.) That of the Volvox on p. 86 is strikingly inaccurate. The microscope with which Mr. Bland saw this must have resembled Sam. Weller's "patent gas microscope of hextra power." Imagine a distinctly oval body. adorned with eight large tubercles, each furnished with two stout cilia, whose length is equal to half the diameter of the Volvox!
The value of the book is marred by the inaccuracy of some of the derivations given. An Antheridium is so called not because it is "like a flower," but because in function it "resembles an anther," if it and similar words should not rather he considered diminutives; and an Archegonium is not the "chief female," but the "beginning of the female organ." We may also notice that the useful fibres of flax and hemp are derived from the inner layer of the bark (p. 12,) as the author himself ​states on p. 90; that valvate means not "in folds", but "arranged like folding doors, "valvæ;" that ovary does not mean "like an egg," (p. 36,) but "that which contains eggs." There are some sentences which a learner would misunderstand, but which the teacher, who knows what the author intended to say, can easily correct; e.g. he appears to state that the stellate form of cell is produced by the mutual pressure of adjacent cells (p. 87.) These, however, are small points, easily corrected in a new edition, and they are pointed out with that view. For the purpose for which the book was written it is well adapted—Part I to give a class of young children their first notions of morphology and classification; Part II, containing a practical experimental introduction to vegetable anatomy and physiology for senior scholars, based upon the South Kensington course. This part, indeed, comprises much information upon the lower forms of vegetable life, which is not usually included in an elementary hook, and more advanced students than those for whom it is intended may learn something from it.
W. B. Grove, B.A.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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