Books and Current Literature. 45 



have moved but little since Latrobe's da3\ A similar vitality 

 is shown by the patriarchal Cypress groups of Lake Drummond 

 in the Dismal Swamp. The few which remain in the lake are 

 survivors from the day when the water level in the lake was 

 lower and although they are for the most part much wasted and 

 reduced to hollow shells, they still put forth their leafy twigs 

 regularly. A comparable instance was noted by the writer 

 recently along the Chattahoochee river in Georgia. The Cypress 

 is not found along this river except in the lower part of its course, 

 but the variety known as the Pond Cypress is common along 

 various of the tributary streams at least as far up the river as 

 Eufaula. At a point below the mouth of one of these streams 

 very high water had at some time brought in several small but 

 old individuals of the Pond Cypress which had fortunately been 

 left right side up when the waters receded, a seemingly difficult 

 feat in itself, and were apparently not much the worse for having 

 been transferred from their natural surroundings to the narrow- 

 shingle of the river-side sand-bar. ' 



The case of the Cypress is not an exceptional one, for every 

 one of our forest trees has an ancestry reaching back some mil- 

 lions of years, and their present structure and habits are a result 

 of ages of adjustment to the maze of interacting environmental 

 forces amid which they have run their race, a fact frequently 

 lost sight of by lovers and students of trees. 

 Johns Hopkins University, 

 Baltimore, Md. 



BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE. 



The Plant Life of Maryland. — The appearance of a 

 volume * giving an extensive treatment of the vegetation of 

 Maryland can not fail to attract the attention of everyone in- 

 terested in regional botanical studies. Of the numerous botani- 

 cal surveys of special provinces which have been made, few have 

 surpassed this in the careful delineation of the vegetation and 

 the discussion of its fundamental features. 



We learn from the introduction (p. 25) that "the principal 

 subject matter of this volume is the Ecological Plant Geography 



*Shreve. Forrest, Chrysler. M. A., Blodgett, F. H.. and Besley, F. W. — The Plant Life of 

 Maryland. pp. 5.S3, plates .^9, figs. 15. Maryland Weather Service, Special Publica- 



tion Vol. III. Baltimore. 1910. 



