54 



HARBWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



bivalve shot across the salt water trough, playing in 

 and out of the red fronds of plocamium. It clung to 

 the frond by means of the hinges, while the valves 

 continued to open and shut with great rapidity, as 

 the hidden mollusc protruded a series of filaments 

 or thread-like processes which correspond in number 

 to the ribs of the external shell. It has even been 

 said that the extremity of each filament consists of 

 an organ of vision, by means of which the creature 

 surveys its surroundings. Whether this be so, or 

 whether the processes are for the purpose of catching 

 food, the restless movement is most interesting for 

 observation, affording some insight, not only into the 

 life of the recent species, but also into the life-history 

 of the greensand genera. With their restless 

 expansion and contraction they lived in the ocean as 

 it then existed, each successive species surviving so 

 long as the necessary conditions of life were main- 

 tained, and each in turn giving place to the develop- 

 ments more adapted to the ever-changing ocean bed 

 or littoral zones. 



NOTES ON NEW BOOKS. 



"^HE ENGLISH FLOWER-GARDEN, by 

 J- W. Robinson (London : John Murray). The 

 author's name is well known, both as a botanist and 

 horticulturist ; and it is only such a man who ought 

 to undertake a book of this kind. Within the last 

 few years the garden has become something more 

 than a mere pleasure-ground, enjoyable and health- 

 ful as it is in that respect — it has developed into a 

 scientific observation-ground and even a laboratory. 

 The smallest garden may have collected within its 

 narrow limits, plants from all parts of the world, 

 representing the most widely separated of orders. 

 Since biological botany came to the front, the 

 deviation of every exotic species from British types 

 has obtained a fresh significance. Mr. Robinson 

 has arranged his work in alphabetical order — the 

 most convenient for his readers he could have de- 

 vised. The illustrations are numerous, and for the 

 most part very effective. The author tells us, " The 

 whole aim of the book is to make the flower-garden 

 a reflex of the world of beautiful plant-life, instead 

 of the poor formal array it has long been." Mr. 

 Robinson has called in to his aid the best writers 

 and contributors to his own journal, " The Garden," 

 and has thus produced an encyclopasdic work of 

 upwards of 424 pp. and 274 plates of flowers, &c. 

 In addition to the alphabetical description of garden- 

 plants, there is an introduction extending over 124 

 pages, dealing with such subjects as " Examples 

 from English Gardens," " Hardy Plants, and the 

 Modes of Arranging Them," "Hardy Flowers, 

 Bulbs, &c.," "Spring Flowers," "Alpine, Bog, 

 &c., Plants," "The Garden of Sweet-smelling 

 Flowers," " The Garden of Beautiful Form," " The 



Wild Garden," "Roses," &c. Altogether a most 

 useful and readable, and thoroughly profitable book 

 has thus grown together, which will meet and satisfy 

 a long-felt want. 



Flowers and their Pedigrees, by Grant Allen (Lon- 

 don : Longmans & Co.). Under this attractive and 

 suggestive title the author has collected various 

 essays and articles which have appeared in maga- 

 zines lately. Mr. Grant Allen plays "ducks and 

 drakes " with the conservatism of academic botany. 

 Many of the extreme supporters of the latter seem to 

 think that plants existed for the purpose of being 

 technically described, and that a man who offended 

 in the least nomenclative matter was guilty of an 

 unpardonable sin, notwithstanding his intimate 

 knowledge of plant life. Mr. Grant Allen has made 

 himself sympathetically familiar with the life and 

 habits of the commonest plants. We often read of 

 naturalists who have so thoroughly identified them- 

 selves with the animal world, that the latter has 

 responded in unison. Nathaniel Hawthorne beauti- 

 fully indicated this kind of sympathy between 

 animals and men in his character of " Donelli." 

 But we never knew any naturalist who seemed to 

 similarly identify himself with plants. All of us 

 love flowers, for the sake of the pleasure they 

 give us — but to love them for their own sakes, in 

 spite of unattractiveness, of lack of colour and 

 perfume — to read off in dwarfed stems, degenerated 

 stamens, aborted petals, modified and altered leaves, 

 botanical details concerning fruit and seeds, the gene- 

 alogy of the plant and the numerous life-changes the 

 individuals have passed through since the original 

 species attained its individual development geological 

 ages ago — nobody has done this like Grant Allen. 

 And, even if the task had been achieved, none will deny 

 that it has never been done in English so graceful 

 and exquisitely smooth, as in the works of our 

 author. The book before us is richly suggestive. 

 A few errors of fact, and possibly also of logic, 

 cannot detract from the merit of this little work. 

 Mr. Allen offers it as the first instalment of a work 

 he hopes some day more fully to carry out — a 

 Functional Companion to the British Flora. We 

 sincerely hope he may live, not only long enough to 

 carry out his hopes, but also to enjoy the honour 

 which rightly belongs to a man devoted to such 

 work. The eight chapters of Flowers and their 

 Pedigrees are among the brightest and best things in 

 our English botanical literature. 



The Poet's Birds, by Phil. Robinson (London : 

 Chatto & Windus). Ornithologists and zoologists 

 surely cannot have had this remarkable book brought 

 vividly before their notice, or we should have heard 

 more of it from their quarters. It deals with no 

 fewer than 90 different kinds of birds, mostly British 

 species, about which our poets have written, or to 

 which references are made in their works. No fewer 

 than 80 of our British poets are quoted. Alas ! their 



