190 Recent Literature. [ ZOE 
Lavatera is either exterminated, or is in the way of being so, from 
all the islands used for pasturage, persisting only on the detached 
rocks and islets, which are out of the reach of goats and sheep. The 
process of destruction may be witnessed at the present time in the 
environs of San Francisco. The outlying lands are being sub- 
divided for building lots, and the market gardeners who formerly 
occupied many of them have moved to other quarters. The Lavatera 
windbreaks no longer protected, survive but a short time. Along 
the avenue leading to the Marine Hospital the gardens were aban- 
doned about two years ago, and the rows of Lavatera are now nearly 
destroyed, although many of them were of sufficiently large size to 
bear the weight of boys climbing among their branches. 
The question as to whether Lavatera was introduced or not, should 
be easy of settlement; if not by the rather vague descriptions, cer- 
tainly by direct comparison of all the species. : 
If the plant was brought from Spain, as claimed, then it must have 
been in common cultivation in that country a hundred and fifty years 
ago, and although that period of time may have sufficed in a different 
climate to produce a slight modification of the type, it probably is 
not greater than the observed variation. 
If L. assurgentiflora was introduced of course the other species 
were also, and it is not at all difficult to see how they might have 
reached the islands, most of them then peopled by Indians, special 
objects of interest to the Mission Fathers. Indeed it is probable 
that in regard to the source and date of introduced plants on this 
coast, too little attention has been given to the comparatively free 
intercourse between this and other Spanish countries in the latter 
half of the last century. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany for High Schools 
and Elementary College Courses, by DoucLas Houcuton Camp- 
BELL, Professor of Botany in the University of Indiana. 8vo. pp. 
253. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1890. This little book represents the 
modern ideas of structure and relationship, and the author in his 
preface makes a much needed protest against the “ only too preval- 
ent idea that the chief aim of botany is the ability to run down a 
plant by means ofan ‘Analytical Key,’ the subject being exhausted 
