NOTES AND C0M:\IENTS 



Dr. ]\I. E. Hardy has contributed to The (3xford Geographies 

 (Clarendon Press) , a booklet of 192 pages, entitled An Introduction to 

 Plant Geography. The principal vegetations of the world are de- 

 scribed, such as selvas, monsoon forests, caatinga, deserts, temperate 

 scrubs, taiga, tundra, etc., with no attempt to treat of their floristic 

 composition. The vegetation is also still more briefly described under 

 a geographical arrangement, ^^egetational maps of the continents are 

 given, on a small scale, and excellent illustrations are mingled with 

 very unsatisfactory sketches, many of which are re-drawn from long 

 familiar illustrations of a superior character. Although such a book is 

 a gratifying testimonial of the increasing interest which geographers 

 are manifesting in vegetation, we suspect that few people will wish to 

 go as far into the subject of plant geography as this introduction will 

 take them without wishing to go much further at the outset. 



An elaborately illustrated volume on The Indigenous Trees of the 

 Hawaiian Islands has been privately published by Mr. Joseph F. Rock, 

 of the College of Hawaii, Honolulu. Much of the virgin forest of Ha- 

 waii has been destroyed by cattle or replaced by stands of introduced 

 trees. All the more interest attaches, therefore, to the native silva 

 of 300 species, over 80 % of which are endemic. An introductory chap- 

 ter on the floral regions contains much of interest, particularly regard- 

 ing the island of Hawaii proper, where climatic contrasts are strongly 

 drawn within extremely limited space, and where the storj- of the ex- 

 tinction of species by flows of lava is plainly written. 



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