ii4 The Ottawa Naturalist. [August 



REVIEW. 



Mountain Wild Flowers of Canada. A Simple and Popular 

 Guide to the Names and Descriptions of the Flowers 

 that Bloom above the Clouds By Julia Henshaw, 

 Toronto, William Briggs, 190^, pp. 384. 



When a book on Canadian wild flowers is prefaced by letters 

 of endorsation from Prof. Macoun and Dr. Fletcher, its excellence 

 may be taken for granted, but the most hurried glance through 

 " Mountain Wild Flowers of Canada" is sufficient to stamp it the 

 finest work of its kind that has been published in America. The 

 hundred full page half-tones reproduced from the best of many 

 hundred photographs of mountain flowers taken by the author 

 are in themselves worth far more than the price of the book. But 

 to one who knows and loves mountain flowers the chief value of 

 Mrs. Henshaw's work lies in the record of her own notes and 

 observations which follow the technical description of each 

 species. Many of the illustrations represent species which have not 

 before been figured, but descriptions and illustrations while they 

 make a b^ok useful and attractive cannot compare in value with 

 the record in simple beautiful language of the results of many 

 years study of the growing plants. What Mrs. Trail has done for 

 the wild flowers of eastern Canada, Mrs. Henshaw is doing for the 

 west and they stand alone. 



Intended primarily as a help to the tourist or botanist who is 

 not familiar with alpine flowers, " Mountain Wild Flowers of 

 Canada " is in the attractiveness of its illustrations and the poetic 

 beauty of the author's notes so far beyond any other popular 

 botanical work that no lover of nature can afford to be without it 

 A few sentences extracted from the preface will indicate Mrs. 

 Henshaw's style: "Who can adequately describe the luxuriant 

 profusion of these alpine meadows ? Who can tell in mere words 

 of the glory and the glamour of such a scene ? All around one 

 the dazzling peaks in their frozen and pitiless beauty point long 

 slender fingers up to God ; cruel crevases spht the gigantic rocks 

 from tree-less top to pine-clad base where glaciers cling to the 

 cliff with sparkling tentacles, and lichened stone-slopes are graci- 

 ously clothed by the creeping juniper, and the pale green of 

 Lyall's larches. 



