REVIEWS. 547 
The Smuts of Australia. Their Structure, Life History, Treatment, and Clas- 
sification. By D. McAlpine. Cloth. Pp. vi+288. Frontispiece. LVI plates, 
15 text figures. Price, with postage, 4s. 9d. Melbourne: Department of Agri- 
culture, 1910. 
_ This work, a companion volume to “The Rusts of Australia,” by the 
same author, has much more than a local value. It is so written as to 
be at once a scientific paper of great excellence, and to be within the 
grasp of everyone who is forced to combat a disease caused by species of 
the group. A short glossary gives explanations of the few terms likely 
to cause difficulty. 
Descriptions are given of 68 species in 10 genera, practically all of 
them figured; 11 are new, there are several additional transfers, and a 
change of name which, however desirable it may be from one standpoint, 
is not in accordance with the present usage of workers in other groups. 
A very few of these are known from the Philippines. * 
The interest to those concerned with problems of more tropical regions 
is not so much in the purely systematic part of the work, as the extended 
discussions of many general problems, embodying the results of much 
recent work on the part of the author and of others, and in the descrip- 
tions of methods followed both in the investigations and in the practical 
treatment of the diseases. In this way, it will prove of the greatest as- 
sistance to all who are in any way interested in these destructive fungi in 
any country in the world. The life-histories are given, so far as known. 
Criticisms must be of a very minor nature. The method of number- 
ing the figures is somewhat confusing, and it would aid at least the 
reviewer to have the new species and combinations designated as such. 
There are a few cases where exception might be taken to the nomenclature. 
The paper is of good quality, and the proof has been very carefully read. 
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