pdf 25 MB - BSBI Archive

NEW PUBLICATIONS. 309
Vef/etahle Teratology : an Account of the Principal Deviations from
the tmtal Constrnction of FUmts. By Maxwell T. Masters,
M.D., F.L.S. With numerous Llustrations by E. M. Williams.
London (Ray Society) : 1869. Pp. 534.
An immense quantity of matter relating to the abnormal conditions
so frequently met with in plants has been written, and Dr. Masters
has done a good and useful work in concentrating it by a judicious
selection of those facts " which seemed intrinsically the most important
or those which are recorded with the most care." He has embodied
these in the volume before us with his own numerous observations
and those of many correspondents.
No English work specially devoted to the subject has been hitherto
published, with the exception of Thomas Hopkirk's ' flora Anomala,'
a small book printed so long ago as 1S17. On the Continent, how-
ever, several treatises of more importance have appeared, though none
so comprehensive in scope as the book under notice, which is un-
doubtedly the best on the subject. One good result which may be
expected to accrue from its publication is a diminution in the repeated
descriptions in the journals of well-known malformations—such as
monstrous forms of Plantain, Cardamine pratends or TrifoUnm repens—
by students and amateurs to whom, as Dr. Masters remarks, Teratology
" seems always to have presented special attractions " and owes " a
large number of its records," but who are prone, as a class, to con-
sider all observations of eqiral value, whereas as the author shows,
" the frequency of a particular change in one species . . . may be so
great as far to exceed the instances of its manifestations in all the
rest put together " (p. 488).
Dr. Masters's book is eminently a record of facts, and their arrange-
ment is a matter of some importance. Teratology being defined to be
" the history of the irregularities of growth and development, and of
the causes producing them," tlie most philosophical mode of grouping
the various conditions met with would seem to be one depending on
those causes, a plan Dr. Masters thinks impracticable. Tliis is probably
true in our present ignorance of them, and so another method suggests
itself, viz. according to the organs affected. This arrangement is not
adopted as it " has only convenience to justify it," but it may, perhaps,
be said that in the existing state of knowledge of the subject conve-