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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 251
tbe question was really one for niorphologists to settle, and they
settled it. To treat the controversy, with Mr. Cooke, as still active
would be absurd. One might as well describe the battle of
Balaclava as still in progress because survivors happily remain
with us. The question was settled, and it was not decided in
favour of the systematists, headed by Nylander. Mr. Cooke, however,
digs up the hatchet, and goes for de Bary, Schwendener, and
the rest, just as if there were some novelty left in his proceedings.
He fortifies himself with the following inspiring sentence written
by " Dr. Nylander, the prince of lichenologists" :— " I have adduced
that the gonidia and gonimia of lichens constitute a normal organic
system necessary, and of the greatest physiological importance, so
that around them we behold the growing (or vegetative) life chiefly
promoted and active." Mr. Cooke quotes this sentence with
special approval, and if he can understand it, no doubt he is
entitled to use it. For our own part it appears to us that the man
who could write a sentence like that is very unlikely to take a lucid
view of anything.
It is difficult to take seriously the work of any man on Freshwater
Algae who describes, in this year of grace 1890, the symbiosis
of lichens as a " hallucination " (p. 183). It may be well enough
—it is intelligible at any rate—that men like Nylander, Krempel-
Imber, and others, cited by Mr. Cooke, who have more or less confined
their studies to systematic lichenology (a branch of study
differing remotely from systematic botany in its extraordinary and
absurd methods),— it is well enough that these men should cling to
their ancient faith ; but when an author presents to the public a
book which professes to teach the form and structure of Fresh-water
AlgfB, it might surely be expected that he should leave this matter
alone or take a reasonable view of it. Let him point to distinguished
authorities on Fresh-water Algae who fail to recognise these among
the "gonidia" of lichens! If Mr. Cooke expects an attentive
hearing on this matter let him not proclaim his own ignorance.
The first 190 pages of this book are of an introductory character.
The chapters are on such subjects as collection and preservation, cellincrease,
polymorphism, asexual and sexual reproduction, conjuga-
tion, pairing of zoospores, alternation of generations, spore germination,
spontaneous movements, notable phenomena (such as
the " breaking of the meres," Red Snow, Gory Dew, Blood Bain),
the dual hypothesis and classification. Over the ground covered by
this list of subjects, there is, indeed, wanted a good trustworthy
popular guide, though the literature is easily enough got at by
students. Mr. Cooke would have been the better for such a guide.
llis knowledge of the literature as displayed here is certainly scanty
and by no means recent. To point out this inadc(j[uacy of treatment
m anything like detail would be bibour spent in vain.
After this introductory portion we have the systematic portion,
consisting of short descriptions of the British Fresh-water Alga?,
and at the end the figures of the genera. This is better. It iniglit
be objected to the descriptions that tliey arc short—so they arc, but
on the whole they are judiciously shortened ; and considering the