Morphology of Angiosperms

Abstract

DURING the last decade or so the aspects of vegetable morphology have undergone an astonishing change, one indeed almost approaching the nature of a revolution. Many of the controversies of twenty years ago have now ceased to excite interest, and those old standing problems on which attention will always be concentrated have come to be regarded from other standpoints, whilst hosts of new ones have hustled themselves to the front. Several causes have contributed to effect this change in the whole perspective of the science. The introduction of more precise methods of observation and experiment has resulted in the disintegration of more than one cherished superstition, but it has been at the same time fertile in good results by leading to a re-examination of the foundations of our morphological beliefs. Our horizon has been greatly extended by the remarkable advances made in palaeontology and cytology, and we have been thus enabled to link together many facts and phenomena the connection of which had hitherto been unsuspected or at the best but guessed at.

Morphology of Angiosperms.

Part ii. Morphology of Spermatophytes. By J. M. Coulter C. J. Chamberlain. Pp. x + 348; illustrated. (New York and London: Appleton and Co., 1903.)