BOOK NOTICES 255 



valuable and scarce of the old works will be most welcome, as the 

 book has for years been scarcely procurable even at a high price. 

 It is full of information upon the history of gardening in England 

 up to 1629, expressed in language that adds to its value, and is 

 illustrated with many plates of excellent illustrations of all plants 

 thought by the author worthy of a place in the garden. The repro- 

 duction is extremely successful, and brings great credit to the 

 publisher and the printers (the Aberdeen University Press) alike for 

 its accuracy and its beauty. 



The introduction into a work relating to a local flora of any 

 British area of the system of classification so well known through 

 Engler's " Die Naturalichen Pflanzenfamilien " marks a departure 

 worthy of notice and likely to find favour in growing measure. For 

 this reason, and also for its own merits as an excellent example of a 

 local flora, "A Flora of the Island of Jersey, with a List of the 

 Plants of the Channel Islands in general, and Remarks upon their 

 Distribution and Geographical Affinities," by L. V. Lester-Garland, 

 M.A., F.L.S. (1903, London: West, Newman, and Co.), may be 

 commended to the notice of readers likely to visit the Channel 

 Islands, or interested in their peculiar flora. 



MANUAL OF BRITISH BOTANY. By the late Charles Cardale 

 Babington, M.A., F.R.S. Ninth Edition. Enlarged from the 

 Author's manuscript and other sources. Edited by Henry and James 

 Groves. (London: Gurney and Jackson, Paternoster Row, i5th 

 July 1904. gs. net; on thin paper in leather, for the pocket, 

 los. 6d.) 



The twenty years that have passed since the issue of the third 

 edition of the well-known " Students' Flora of the British Islands," 

 and the still longer period since that of the eighth edition of the 

 equally familiar " Manual of British Botany," have been marked by 

 constant and great progress in the study of the British flora, and by 

 the publication of numerous papers and several books dealing with 

 various parts of the subject. Much of the additional information 

 bears on the distribution within our islands of species and varieties 

 already known as British ; but a more critical study has revealed 

 some species and numerous varieties not previously known as British, 

 and has shown more accurately the relations of our flora to the floras 

 of other lands, while the standpoints with respect to the values of 

 characters and systems of classification have changed. Again, the 

 vexed questions of nomenclature have led to many changes in the 

 names of genera, species, and varieties, which often make it hard to 

 recognise old friends under the names that it is found they should 

 bear. Thus it has been felt by students of the British flora that 

 there has been great need of a book that would in condensed and 

 trustworthy form give the results of the last twenty years' advance. 



