Reviews.
The very interesting book, the title of which is given above, is written by the well-known Editor of "Hardwicke's Science Gossip." It is intended chiefly for such as have the desire but lack time and opportunity to make themselves acquainted with the varied and suggestive results of modern botanical investigation, otherwise than second hand. Dr. Taylor has summarised the more important of these results, and done so in a manner which will please most botanists and impart valuable and novel ideas to many whose knowledge of the recent labours of Dr. Charles Darwin and others is but limited, The first chapter is devoted to a consideration of what the author calls the old and new philosophy of flowers, The former had for one of its principal articles of its belief that flowers and plants in general were created solely for the delight or use of man, The teachings of the latter put this consideration in a subordinate place, and indicate that all the qualities possessed by plants of every description, flowering and flowerless, but especially the farmer, are just those which are of essential importance to the plants themselves. "Thus," to quote our author—
“Most flowers require crossing, and the floral machinery of even our common British wild flowers is of the moat unlooked for and complex description, usually designed to prevent self-fertilisation and encourage or ensure crossing. Among some of the chief of these devices may be mentioned the following:—Absolute barrenness when the pistil is fertilised by the pollen of the adjacent stamens; pistils ripening before the stamens, or stamens before the pistil; dimorphism and trimorphism, or flowers possessing pistils and stamens of two and three lengths, all intended for the special purpose of crossing; the existence of monœcious and diœcious flowers, or these in which we have staminate and pistiliate flowers on the same plant, but with the pistils and stamens separated from one another, and those in which one plant bears staminate flowers only and the other pistillate flowers. Mast of these contrivances are not of a nature to invite attention; and same of them have escaped the notice of botanists for years, or had been remarked without being understood. We can, therefore, readily understand why they should be passed over by those who are totally ignorant of botanical structures. And yet it is these very organs and their arrangement on which the perpetuity of the species depends. . . . . The colours and perfumes, and in many instances even the shapes of flowers, have reference only in the visits of insects. And in proportion to the brilliancy or size of the corolla, or the sweetness of the perfume, is the necessity of the plants possessing them to be crossed. On the other hand, inconspicuous flowers are either self-fertilised or only occasionally require to be crossed; whilst the largest number of flowers, such as the grasses, sedges, rushes, &c., lave no corolla at all, and do not require insect aid to carry the pollen from plant to plant, so as to beneficially cross them. Modern botanists find it comparatively easy to group all plants into two great divisions—those crossed or fertilised by insects and those by the wind. The terms entomophilous and anemophilous are applied respectively to these two classes. . . . . To such an extreme is the division between wind and insect-fertilised flowers carried out, that the microscopist can, without much difficulty, assign even pollen-grains to one or the other of these groups. Thus, the pollen usually produced by entomophilous plants have their surfaces roughened over
with minute points or other means of readily attaching them to the hairy
